


v? 






% <£' 



• y A 










I . 









' ,0 o 










\V <*>„ 

























a, - /, 







A 


















^r 



i" 



^ a 









^ 



\ I 









o 




cy 



% •£- 



X' 



^ v % 









o 






«5 ^ - 









v o 



V*; *,cP 

























"* 












o X 









./ ■ 



# 

























■ 









A 

■A . 0.V 



,J> % 















"I 






a> ry 






io 1 






' C A V 

*** v. 












A° 




% 



N 



A , ^ 






*r <<£' *A\> ' '^ CA - ^' # 

^ V - SSMl A> V A _ t/> ^ 

* - -^ A^ 

^ * ■'. so 3 v# ^ »IH* v. ' <^ 













: W* : '%/ w ^/ : 



o> : 






.%- 






■ ^ ,o x 



^ 



o. 



u 






V 










A 



> ^!, A'. .' . .P AV X ■ - X ^ 



s S 



4 ■/, 



v, 

,°°- 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/addressesofpresi04wils 






_ 



)% ^- 



66th Congress) 
1st Session J 



SENATE 



/ Document 
\ No. 120 



ADDRESSES 




OF 



PRESIDENT WILSON 

ADDRESSES DELIVERED BY 

PRESIDENT WILSON 
ON HIS WESTERN TOUR 

SEPTEMBER 4 TO SEPTEMBER 25, 1919 
on THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS, TREATY 
OF PEACE WITH GERMANY, INDUS- 
TRIAL CONDITIONS, HIGH COST OF 
LIVING, RACE RIOTS, ETC. :: :: :: 




PRESENTED BY MR. HITCHCOCK 

October 7, 1919.— Ordered to be printed 



WASHINGTON 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 

1919 



D*\ of 
OCT 20 






ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON ON WESTERN TOUR, SEPTEM- 
BER 4 TO 25, 1919. 

September k: Page. 

Columbus, Ohio, League of Nations- 5 

Indianapolis, Ind., at Coliseum, Peace Treaty 19 

September 5: 

St. Louis, Mo., at luncheon at Hotel Statler, League of Nations. 29 

St. Louis, Mo., at Coliseum, Peace Treaty and League of Nations 39 

September 6: 

Kansas City, Mo., at Convention Hall, Treaty of Peace 49 

r Des Moines, Iowa, Peace Treaty 59 

September 8: 

Omaha, Nebr., at Auditorium, Peace Treaty i 71 

Sioux Falls, S. Dak., at Coliseum, Peace Treaty 81 

September 9: 

- St. Paul, Minn., before State Legislature, High Cost of Living 91 

Minneapolis, Minn., League of Nations 99 

. St. Paul, Minn., at Auditorium, League of Nations ., 107 

September 10: 

J tarck, N. Dak., Peace Treaty 117 

} an, N. Dak., from rear platform of train, Peace Treaty 127 

Septet,* • 11: 

Billings, Mont., at Auditorium, Peace Treaty 129 

Helena, Mont., at Opera House, League of Nations 139 

Septembe\r 12: 

Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, League of Nations 155 

Spokane, Wash., League of Nations 165 

September IS: 

Tap<3ma, Wash., at Armory, Peace Treaty 177 

ttle, Wash., at Hippodrome, Peace Treaty 189 

ttle, Wash., at Arena, Peace Treaty 191 

*. her 15: 

/itland, Oreg., at luncheon, Hotel Portland, League of Nations- 201 

i. rtland, Oreg., at Auditorium, League of Nations 207 

Sep nber 17: 

S an Francisco, Calif., at luncheon, Palace Hotel, Peace Treaty 219 

San Francisco, Calif., at Auditorium, League of Nations 231 

September 18: 

£$an Francisco, Calif., at luncheon, Palace Hotel, Peace Treaty 243 

Oakland, Calif., at Auditorium, Peace Treaty 255 

September 19: 

San Diego, Calif., at Stadium, Peace Treaty 265 

San Diego, Calif., League of Nations 277 

3 



4 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

September 20: Page. 

Los Angeles, Calif., at Hotel Alexandria, League of Nations 283 

Los Angeles, Calif., at Auditorium, Peace Treaty 291 

September 22: 

Sacramento, Calif., from rear platform, Peace Treaty 303 

Reno, Nev., Peace Treaty and League of Nations 307 

September 23: 

Ogden, Utah, from rear platform, Peace Treaty : 305 

Salt Lake City, Utah, at Tabernacle, League of Nations 321 

September 24: 

Cheyenne, Wyo., Peace Treaty 335 

September 25: 

Denver, Colo., at Auditorium, League of Nations 349 

Peublo, Colo., League of Nations 359 



s? 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON, 



ADDRESS AT COLUMBUS, OHIO, 

SEPTEMBER 4, 1919. 



Mr. Chairman, Gov. Campbell, my fellow citizens, it is with very 
profound pleasure that I find myself face to face with you. I have 
for a long time chafed at the confinement of Washington. I have 
for a long time wished to fulfill the purpose with which my heart 
was full when I returned to our beloved country, namely, to go 
out and report to my fellow countrymen concerning those affairs of 
the world which now need to be settled. The only people I owe any 
report to are you and the other citizens of the United States. 

And it has become increasingly necessary, apparently, that I 
should report to you. After all the various angles at which you have 
heard the treaty held up, perhaps you would like to know what is in 
the treaty. I find it very difficult in reading some of the speeches 
that I have read to form any conception of that great document. It 
is a document unique in the history of the world for many reasons, 
and I think I can not do you a better service, or the peace of the 
world a better service, than by pointing out to you just what this 
treaty contains and what it seeks to do. 

In the first place, my fellow countrymen, it seeks to punish one of t 
the greatest wrongs ever done in historj^, the wrong which Germany 
sought to do to the world and to civilization; and there ought to be 
no weak purpose with regard to the application of the punishment. 
She attempted an intolerable thing, and she must be made to pay 
for the attempt. The terms of the treaty are severe, but they are not 
unjust. I can testify that the men associated with me at the peace 
conference in Paris had it in their hearts to do justice and not wrong. 
But they knew, perhaps, with a more vivid sense of what had hap- 
pened than we could possibly know on this side of the water, the 
many solemn covenants which Germany had disregarded, the long- 
preparation she had made to overwhelm her neighbors, and the 
litter disregard which she had shown for human rights, for the 

5 



6 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

rights of women, of children, of those who were helpless. They had 
seen their lands devasted by an enemy that devoted himself not only 
to the effort at victory, but to the effort at terror — seeking to terrify 
the people whom he fought. And I wish to testify that they ex- 
ercised restraint in the terms of this treat} 7 . They did not wish to 
overwhelm any great nation. They acknowledged that Germany was 
a great nation, and they had no purpose of overwhelming the Ger- 
man people, but they did think that it ought to be burned into the 
consciousness of men forever that no people ought to permit its 
government to do what the German Government did. 

In the last analysis, my fellow countrymen, as we in America 
would be the first to claim, a people are responsible for the acts of 
their government. If their government purposes things that are 
wrong, they ought to take measures to see to it that that purpose is 
not executed. Germany was self-governed; her rulers had not con- 
cealed the purposes that they had in mind, but they had deceived 
their people as to the character of the methods they were going to 
use, and I believe from what I can learn that there is an awakened 
consciousness in Germany itself of the deep iniquity of the thing 
that was attempted. When the Austrian delegates came before the 
peace conference, they in so many words spoke of the origination of 
the war as a crime and admitted in our presence that it was a thing 
intolerable to contemplate. They knew in their hearts that it had 
done them the deepest conceivable wrong, that it had put their 
people and the people of Germany at the judgment seat of mankind, 
and throughout this treaty every term that was applied to Germany 
was meant, not to humiliate Germany, but to rectify the wrong that 
she had done. 

Look even into the severe terms of reparation — for there was no 
indemnity. No indemnity of any sort was claimed, merely repara- 
tion, merely paying for the destruction done, merely making good 
the losses so far as such losses could be made good which she had 
unjustly inflicted, not upon the governments, for the reparation is 
not to go to the governments, but upon the people whose rights 
she had trodden upon with absolute absence of everything that even 
resembled pity. There was no indemnity in this treaty, but there is 
reparation, and even in the terms of reparation a method is devised 
by which the reparation shall be adjusted to Germany's ability to 
pay it. 

I am astonished at some of the statements I hear made about this 
treaty. The truth is that they are made b} 7 persons who have not 
read the treaty or who, if they have read it, have not comprehended 
its meaning. There is a method of adjustment in that treaty by 
which the reparation shall not be pressed beyond the point which 
Germany can pay, but which will be pressed to the utmost point that 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WDLSON. 7 

Germany can pay — which is just, which is righteous. It would have 
been intolerable if there had been anything else. For, my fellow 
citizens, this treaty is not meant merely to end this single war. It is 
meant as a notice to every government which in the future will 
attempt this thing that mankind will unite to inflict the same punish- 
ment. There is no national triumph sought to be recorded in this 
treaty. There is no glory sought for any particular nation. The thought 
of the statesmen collected around that table was of their people, of 
the sufferings that they had gone through, of the losses they had 
incurred — that great throbbing heart which was so depressed, so 
forlorn, so sad in every memory that it had had of the five tragical 
years that have gone. Let us never forget those years, my fellow 
countrymen. Let us never forget the purpose — the high purpose, 
the disinterested purpose — with which America lent its strength not 
for its own glory but for the defense of mankind. 

As I said, this treaty was not intended merely to end this war. It 
was intended to prevent any similar war. I wonder if some of the 
opponents of the league of nations have forgotten the promises wo 
made our people before we went to that peace table. We had taken 
by processes of law the flower of our youth from every household, 
and we told those mothers and fathers and sisters and wives and 
sweethearts that we were taking those men to fight a war which 
would end business of that sort; and if we do not end it, if we do 
not do the best that human concert of action can do to end it, we 
are of all men the most unfaithful, the most unfaithful to the loving 
hearts who suffered in this war, the most unfaithful to those house- 
holds bowed in grief and yet lifted with the feeling that the lad laid 
down his life for a great thing and, among other things, in order that 
other lads might never have to do the same thing. That is what the 
league of nations is for, to end this war justly, and then not merely 
to serve notice on governments which would contemplate the same 
things that Germany contemplated that they will do it at their peril, 
but also concerning the combination of power which will prove to 
them that they will do it at their peril. It is idle to say the world 
will combine against you, because it may not, but it is persuasive to 
say the world is combined against you, and will remain combined 
against the things that Germany attempted. The league of nations 
is the only thing that can prevent the recurrence of this dreadful 
catastrophe and redeem our promises. 

The character of the league is based upon the experience of this 
very war. I did not meet a single public man who did not admit 
these things, that Germany would not have gone into this war if she 
had thought Great Britain was going into it, and that she most cer- 
tainly would never have gone into this war if she dreamed America 
was going into it. And they all admitted that a notice beforehand 



8 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

that the greatest powers of the world would combine to prevent this 
sort of thing would prevent it absolutely. When gentlemen tell you, 
therefore, that the league of nations is intended for some other pur- 
pose than this, merely reply this to them : If we do not do this thing, 
we have neglected the central covenant that we made to our people, 
and there will then be no statesmen of any country who can there- 
after promise his people alleviation from the perils of war. The 
passions of this world are not dead. The rivalries of this world 
have not cooled. They have been rendered hotter than ever. The 
harness that is to unite nations is more necessary now than it ever 
was before, and unless there is this assurance of combined action 
before wrong is attempted, wrong will be attempted just so soon as 
the most ambitious nations can recover from the financial stress of 
this war. ' 

Now, look what else is in the treaty. This treaty is unique in the 
•history of mankind, because the center of it is the redemption of 
/weak nations. There never was a congress of nations before that 
considered the rights of those who could not enforce their rights. 
There never was a congress of nations before that did not seek to 
effect some balance of power brought about by means of serving the 
strength and interest of the strongest powers concerned; whereas 
this treaty builds up nations that never could have won their freedom 
in any other way; builds them up by gift, by largess, not by obliga- 
tions : builds them up because of the conviction of the men who wrote 
the treaty that the rights of people transcend the rights of govern- 
ments, because of the conviction of the men who wrote that treaty 
that the fertile source of war is wrong. The Austro-Hungarian 
Empire, for example, was held together by military force and con- 
sisted of peoples who did not want to live together, who did not 
have the spirit of nationality as toward each other, who were con- 
stantly chafing at the bands that held them. Hungary, though a 
willing partner of Austria, was willing to be a partner because she 
could share Austria's strength to accomplish her own ambitions, and 
her own ambitions were to hold under her the Jugo-Slavic peoples 
that lay to the south of her; Bohemia, an unhappy partner, a partner 
by duress, beating in all her veins the strongest national impulse that 
was to be found anywhere in Europe; and north of that, pitiful 
Poland, a great nation divided up among the great powers of 
Europe, torn asunder, kinship disregarded, natural ties treated with 
contempt, and an obligatory division among sovereigns imposed 
upon her — a part of her given to Russia, a part of her given to 
Austria, a part of her given to Germany — great bodies of Polish 
people never permitted to have the normal intercourse with their 
kinsmen for fear thai that fine instinct of the heart should assert 
itself which hind- families together. Poland could never nave won 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 9 

her independence. Bohemia never could have broken away from 
the Austro-Hungarian combination. The Slavic peoples to the south, 
running down into the great Balkan Peninsula, had again and again 
tried to assert their nationality and independence, and had as often 
been crushed, not by the immediate power they were fighting, but 
by the combined power of Europe. The old alliances, the old bal- 
ances of power, were meant to see to it that no little nation asserted 
its right to the disturbance of the peace of Europe, and every time 
an assertion of rights was attempted they were suppressed by com- 
bined influence and force. 

This treaty tears away all that: says these people have a right to 
live their own lives under the governments which they themselves 
choose to set up. That is the American principle, and I was glad to 
fight for it. When strategic claims were urged, it was matter of 
common counsel that such considerations were not in our thought. 
We were not now arranging for future wars. We were giving people 
what belonged to them. My fellow citizens, I do not think there is 
any man alive who has a more tender sympathy for the great people 
of Italy than I have, and a very stern duty was presented to us when 
we had to consider some of the claims of Italy on the Adriatic, be- 
cause strategically, from the point of view of future wars, Italy 
needed a military foothold on the other side of the Adriatic, but her 
people did not live there except in little spots. It was a Slavic 
people, and I had to say to my Italian friends, " Everywhere else in 
this treaty we have given territory to the people who lived on it, and 
I do not think that it is for the advantage of Italy, and I am sure 
it is not for the advantage of the world, to give Italy territory where 
other people live." I felt the force of the argument for what they 
wanted, and it was the old argument that had always prevailed, 
namely, that they needed it from a military point of view, and I have 
no doubt that if there is no league of nations, they will need it from 
a military point of view; but if there is a league of nations, they 
will not need it from a military point of view. 

If there is no league of nations, the military point of view will 
prevail in every instance, and peace will be brought into contempt, 
but if there is a league of nations, Italy need not fear the fact that 
the shores on the other side of the Adriatic tower above the lower 
and sandy shores on her side the sea, because there will be no threat- 
ening guns there, and the nations of the world will have concerted, 
not merely to see that the Slavic peoples have their rights, but that 
the Italian people have their rights as well. I had rather have every- 
body on my side than be armed to the teeth. Every settlement that 
is right, every settlement that is based on the principles I have al- 
luded to, is a safe settlement, because the S3 r mpathy of mankind will 
be behind it. 



10 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WDLSON. 

• Some gentlemen have feared with regard to the league of nations 
that we will be obliged to do things we do not want to do. If the 
treaty were, wrong, that might be so, but if the treaty is right, we 
will wish to preserve right. I think I know the heart of this great 
people whom I, for the time being have the high honor to represent 
better than some other men that I hear talk. I have been bred, and 
am proud to have been bred, in the old revolutionary school which 
set this Government up, when it was set up as the friend of mankind, 
and I know if the}^ do not that America has never lost that vision 
or that purpose. But I have not the slightest fear that arms will be 
necessary if the purpose is there. If I know that my adversary is 
armed and I am not, I do not press the controversy, and if any nation 
entertains selfish purposes set against the principles established in 
this treaty and is told by the rest of the world that it must withdraw 
its claims, it will not press them. 

The heart of this treaty then, my fellow citizens, is not even that it 
punishes Germany. That is a temporary thing. It is that it rectifies 
the age-long wrongs which characterized the history of Europe. 
There were some of us who wished that the scope of the treaty would 
reach some other age-long wrongs. It was a big job, and I do not 
say that we wished that it were bigger, but there Avere other wrongs 
elsewhere than in Europe and of the same kind which no doubt ought 
to be righted, and some day will be righted, but which we could not 
draw into the treaty because we could deal only with the countries 
whom the war had engulfed and affected. But so far as the scope 
of our authority wont, we rectified the wrongs which have been the 
fertile source of war in Europe. 

Have you ever reflected, my fellow countrymen, on the real source 
of revolution? Men do not start revolutions in a sudden passion. 
Do you remember what Thomas Carlisle said about the French 
Revolution? He was speaking of the so-called Hundred Days Ter- 
ror which reigned not only in Paris, but throughout France, in the 
days of the French Revolution, and he reminded his readers that 
back of that hundred days lay several hundred years of agony and 
of wrong. The French people had been deeply and consistently 
wronged by their Government, robbed, their human rights dis- 
regarded, and the slow agony of those hundreds of years had after 
awhile gathered into a hot anger that could not be suppressed. 
Revolutions do not spring up overnight. Revolutions come from the 
• long suppression of the human spirit. Revolutions come because 
5 men know that they have rights and that they are disregarded ; and 
when we think of the future of the world in connection with this 
treaty we must remember that one of the chief efforts of those who 
made this treaty was to remove that anger from the heart of great 
peoples, great peoples who had always been suppressed, who 'had 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. ll 

always been used, and who had always been the tools in the hands 
of governments, generally alien governments, not their own. The 
makers of the treaty knew that if these wrongs were not removed, 
there could be no peace in the world, because, after all, my fellow 
citizens, war comes from the seed of wrong and not from the seed 
of right. This treaty is an attempt to right the history of Europe, 
and, in my humble judgment, it is a measurable success. I say 
" measurable," my fellow citizens, because you will realize the diffi- 
culty of this: 

Here are two neighboring peoples. The one people have not 
stopped at a sharp line, and the settlements of the other people or 
their migrations have not begun at a sharp line. They have inter- 
mingled. There are regions where }~ou can not draw a national 
line and say there are Slavs on this side [illustrating] and Italians 
on that [illustrating]. It can not be done. You have to approxi- 
mate the line. You have to come as near to it as you can, and then 
trust to the processes of history to redistribute, it may be, the people 
that are on the wrong side of the line. There are many such lines 
drawn in this treaty and to be drawn in the Austrian treaty, where 
there are perhaps more lines of that sort than in the German treaty. 
When we came to draw the line between the Polish people and the 
German people — not the line between Germany and Poland; there 
was no Poland, strictly speaking, but the line between the German 
and the Polish people— we were confronted by such problems as the 
disposition of districts like the eastern part of Silesia, which is 
called Upper Silesia because it is mountainous and the other part is 
not. Upper Silesia is chiefly Polish, and when we came to draw the 
line of what should be Poland it was necessary to include Upper 
Silesia if we were realh T going to play fair and make Poland up of 
the Polish peoples wherever we found them in sufficiently close 
neighborhood to one another, but it was not perfectly clear that 
Upper Silesia wanted to be part of Poland. At any rate, there were 
Germans in Upper Silesia who said that it did not, and therefore 
we did there what we did in many other places. We said, "Very 
well, then, we will let the people that live there decide. We will 
have a referendum. Within a certain length of time after the war, 
under the supervision of an international commission which will have 
a sufficient armed force behind it to preserve order and see that 
nobody interferes with the elections, we will have an absolutely free 
vote and Upper Silesia shall go either to Germany or to Poland, as 
the people in Upper Silesia prefer." That illustrates many other 
cases where we provided for a referendum, or a plebiscite, as they 
chose to call it. We are going to leave it to the people themselves, as 
we should have done, what government they shall live under. It is 
none of my prerogative to allot peoples to this government or the 



12 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

other. It is nobody's right to do that allotting except the people 
themselves, and I want to testify that this treaty is shot through 
with the American principle of the choice of the governed. 

Of course, at times it went further than we could make a practical 
policy of, because various peoples were keen upon getting back 
portions of their population which were separated from them by 
many miles of territory, and we could not spot the map over with 
little pieces of separated States. I even reminded my Italian col- 
leagues that if they were going to claim every place where there 
was a large Italian population, we would have to cede New York 
to them, because there are more Italians in New York than in any 
Italian city. But I hope, I believe, that the Italians in New York 
City are as glad to stay there as we are to have them. But I would 
not have you suppose that I am intimating that my Italian col- 
leagues entered any claim for New York City. 

We of all peoples in the world, my fellow citizens, ought to be 
able to understand the questions of this treaty without anybody 
explaining them to us, for we are made up out of all the peoples of 
the world. I dare say that in this audience there are representatives 
of practically all the people dealt with in this treaty. You do not 
have to have me explain national aspirations to you. You have been 
brought up on them. You have learned of them since you were 
children, and it is those national aspirations which we sought to 
release and give an outlet to in this great treaty. 

But we did much more than that. This treaty contains among 
/other things a Magna Charta of labor — a thing unheard of until this 
/ interesting year of grace. There is a whole section of the treaty 
devoted to arrangements by which the interests of those who labor 
with their hands all over the world, whether they be men or women 
or children, are sought to be safeguarded ; and next month there is 
to meet the first assembly under this section of the league. Let me 
tell you, it will meet whether the treaty is ratified by that time or 
not. There is to meet an assembly which represents the interests of 
laboring men throughout the world. Not their political interests; 
there is nothing political about it. It is the interests of men con- 
cerning the conditions of their labor; concerning the character of 
labor which women shall engage in, the character of labor Avhich 
children shall be permitted to engage in; the hours of labor: and, 
incidentally, of course, the remuneration of labor; that labor 
shall be remunerated in proportion, of course, to the maintenance 
of the standard of living, which is proper, for the man who is ex- 
pected to give his whole brain and intelligence and energy to a 
particular task. I hear very little said about the Magna Charta of 
labor which is embodied in this treaty. It forecasts the day, which 
ought to have come long ago, when statesmen will realize that no 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 13 

nation is fortunate which is not happy and that no nation can be 
happy whose people are not contented ; contented in their lives and 
fortunate in the circumstances of their lives. 

If I were to state what seems to me the central idea of this treaty, 
it would be this : It is almost a discovery in international conventions 
that nations do not consist of their governments but consist of their./ 
people. That is a rudimentary idea. It seems to us in America to 
go without saying, but, my fellow citizens, it was never the leading- 
idea in any other international congress that I ever heard of; that 
is to say, any international congress made up of the representatives 
of governments. They were always thinking of national policy, of 
national advantage, of the rivalries of trade, of the advantages of 
territorial conquest. There is nothing of that in this treaty. You 
will notice that even the territories which are taken away from 
Germany, like her colonies, are not given to anybody. There is not 
a single act of annexation in this treaty. Territories inhabited by 
people not yet to govern themselves, either because of economical or 
other circumstances, are put under the care of powers, who are to 
act as trustees — trustees responsible in the form of the world at 
the bar of the league of nations, and the terms upon which they are 
to exercise their trusteeship are outlined. They are not to use those 
people by way of draft to fight their wars for them. They are 
not to permit any form of slavery among them, or of enforced labor. 
They are to see to it that there are humane conditions of labor with 
regard not only to the women and children but to the men also. 
They are to establish no fortifications. They are to regulate the 
liquor and the opium traffic. They are to see to it, in other words, 
that the lives of the people whose care they assume — not sovereignty 
over whom they assume — are kept clean and safe and wholesome. 
There again the principle of the treaty comes out, that the object 
of the arrangement is the welfare of the people who live there, and 
not the advantage of the trustee. 

It goes beyond that. It seeks to gather under the common super- 
vision of the league of nations the various instrumentalities by which 
the world has been trying to check the evils that were in some places 
debasing men, like the opium traffic, like the traffic — for it was a 
traffic — in women and children, like the traffic in other dangerous 
drugs, like the traffic in arms among uncivilized people who could 
use arms only for their own detriment. It provides for sanitation, 
for the work of the Red Cross. Why, those clauses, my fellow citi- 
zens, draw the hearts of the world into league, draw the noble 
impulses of the world together and make a team of them. 

I used to be told that this was an age in which mind was monarch, 
and my comment was that if that was true, the mind was one of 



14 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

those modern monarchs that reigns and does not govern; that, as a 
matter of fact, we were governed by a great representative assembly 
made up of the human passions, and that the best we could manage 
was that the high and fine passions should be in a majority so that 
they could control the baser passions, so that they could check the 
things that were wrong. This treaty seeks something like that. In 
drawing the humane endeavors of the world together it makes a 
league of the fine passions of the world, of its philanthropic passions, 
of its passion of pity, of its passion of human sympathy, of its 
passion of human friendliness and helpfulness, for there is such a 
passion. It is the passion which has lifted us along the. slow road 
of civilization. It is the passion which has made ordered govern- 
ment possible. It is the passion which has made justice and estab- 
lished it in the world. 

That is the treaty. Did you ever hear of it before? Did you ever 
know before what was in this treaty ? Did anybody before ever tell 
you what the treaty was intended to do? I beg, my fellow citizens, 
that you and the rest of those Americans with whom we are happy 
to be associated all over this broad land will read the treaty your- 
selves, or, if you will not take the time to do that — for it is a tech- 
nical document — that you will accept the interpretation of those who 
made it and know what the intentions were in the making of it. I 
hear a great deal, my fellow citizens, about the selfishness and the 
selfish ambitions of other governments, and I would not be doing 
justice to the gifted men with whom I was associated on the other 
side of the water if I did not testify that the purposes that I have 
outlined were their purposes. We differed as to the method very 
often. We had discussions as to the details, but we never had any 
serious discussion as to the principle. While we all acknowledged 
that the principles might perhaps in detail have been better realized, 
we are all back of those principles. There is a concert of mind and 
of purpose and of policy in the world that was never in existence, 
before. I am not saying that by way of credit to myself or to those 
colleagues to whom I have alluded, because what happened to us was 
that we got messages from our people. We were under instructions, 
whether they were written down or not, and we did not dare come 
home without fulfilling those instructions. If I could not have 
brought back the kind of treaty that I did bring back, I never would 
have come back, because I would have been an unfaithful servant, 
and you would have had the right to condemn me in any way that 
you chose to use. So that I testify that this is an American treaty 
not only, but it is a treaty that expresses the heart of the great 
peoples who were associated together in the war against Germany. 

1 said at the opening of this informal address, my fellow citizens 
that I had come to make a report to you. I want to add to that a 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 15 

little bit. I have not come to debate the treaty. It speaks for itself, 
if you will let it. The arguments directed against it are directed 
against it with a radical misunderstanding of the instrument itself. 
Therefore, I am not going anywhere to debate the treaty. I am going 
to expound it, and I am going, as I do here, now, to-day, to urge 
you in every vocal method that you can use to assert the spirit of 
the American people in support of it. Do not let men pull it down. 
Do not let them misrepresent it. Do not let them lead this Nation 
away from the high purposes with which this war was inaugurated 
and fought. As I came through that line of youngsters in khaki a 
few minutes ago I felt that I could salute them because I had done 
the job in the way I promised them I would do it, and when this 
treaty is accepted, men in khaki will not have to cross the seas again. 
That is the reason I believe in it. 

I say " when it is accepted," for it will be accepted. I have never 
entertained a moment's doubt of that, and the only thing I have been 
impatient of has been the delay. It is not dangerous delay, except 
for the temper of the peoples scattered throughout the world who 
are waiting. Do you realize, my fellow citizens, that the whole world 
is waiting on America? The only country in the world that is 
trusted at this moment is the United States, and the peoples of the 
world are waiting to see whether their trust is justified or not. That 
has been the ground of my impatience. I knew their trust was justi- 
fied, but I begrudged the time that certain gentlemen wish to take in 
telling them so. We shall tell them so in a voice as authentic as any 
voice in history, and in the years to come men will be glad to remem- 
ber that they had some part in the great struggle which brought this 
incomparable consummation of the hopes of mankind. ; 



ADDRESS FROM REAR PLATFORM, RICHMOND, IND., 

SEPTEMBER 4, 1919. 



I am trying to tell the people what is in the treaty. You would 
not know what was in it to read some of the speeches I read, 
and if you will be generous enough to me to read some of the things 
I say, I hope it will help to clarify a great many matters which 
have been very much obscured by some of the things which have 
heen said. Because we have now to make the most critical choice 
we ever made as a nation, and it ought to be made in all soberness 
and without the slightest tinge of party feeling in it. I would be 
ashamed of myself if I discussed this great matter as a Democrat 
and not as an American. I am sure that every man who looks at it 
without party prejudice and as an American will find in that treaty 
more things that are genuinely American than were ever put into 
any similar document before. 

The chief thing to notice about it, my fellow citizens, is that it is) 
the first treaty ever made by great powers that was not made in 
their own favor. It is made for the protection of the weak peoples 
of the world and not for the aggrandizement of the strong. That is 
a noble achievement, and it is largely due to the influence of such 
great peoples as the people of America, who hold at their heart this 
principle, that nobody has the right to impose sovereignty upon 
anybody else ; that, in disposing of the affairs of a nation, that nation 
or people must be its own master and make its own choice. The 
extraordinary achievement of this treaty is that it gives a free choice 
to people who never could have won it for themselves. It is for the 
first time in the history of international transactions an act of sys- 
tematic justice and not an act of grabbing and seizing. 

If you will just regard that as the heart of the treaty — for it is 
the heart of the treaty — then everything else about it is put in a 
different light. If we want to stand by that principle, then we can 
justify the history of America as we can in no other way, for that 
is the history and principle of America. That is at the heart of it. 
I beg that, whenever you consider this great matter, you will look 
at it from this point of view : Shall we or shall we not sustain the 
first great act of international justice? The thing wears a very big 
141677— S. Doc. 120, 66-1 2 17 



18 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WDLSON. 

aspect when you look at- it that way, and all little matters seem to 
fall away and one seems ashamed to bring in special interests, par- 
ticularly party interests. What difference does party make when 
mankind is involved? Parties are intended, if they are intended 
for any legitimate purpose, to serve mankind, and they are based 
upon legitimate differences of opinion, not as to whether mankind 
shall be served or not, but as to the way in which it shall be served ; 
and, so far as those differences are legitimate differences, party lines 
are justified. 



ADDRESS AT COLISEUM, INDIANAPOLIS, IND., 

SEPTEMBER 4, 1919. 



Gov. Goodrich, my fellow citizens, so great a company as this 
tempts me to make a speech, and yet I want to say to you in all 
seriousness and soberness that I have not come here to make a speech 
in the ordinary sense of that term. I have come upon a very sober 
errand indeed. I have come to report to you upon the work which 
the representatives of the United States attempted to do at the con- 
ference of peace on the other side of the sea, because, my fellow 
citizens, I realize that my colleagues and I in the task we attempted 
over there were your servants. We went there upon a distinct errand, 
which it was our duty to perform in the spirit which you had dis- 
played in the prosecution of the war and in conserving the purposes 
and objects of that war. 

I was in the city of Columbus this forenoon. I was endeavoring 
to explain to a body of our fellow citizens there just what it was that 
the treaty of peace contained, for I must frankly admit that in most 
of the speeches that I have heard in debate upon the treaty of peace 
it would be impossible to form a definite conception of what that 
instrument means. I want to recall to you for the purposes of this 
evening the circumstances of the war and the purposes for which 
our men spent their lives on the other side of the sea. You will 
remember that a prince of the House of Austria was slain in one of 
the cities of Serbia. Serbia was one of the little kingdoms of Europe. 
She had no strength which any of the great powers needed to fear, 
and as we see the war now, Germany and those who conspired with 
her made a pretext of that assassination in order to make unconscion- 
able demands of the weak and helpless Kingdom of Serbia. Not 
with a view to bringing about an acquiescence in those demands, but 
with a view to bringing about a conflict in which other purposes 
quite separate from the purposes connected with those demands 
could be achieved. Just so soon as those demands were made on 
Serbia, the other Governments of Europe sent telegraphic messages 
to Berlin and Vienna asking that the matter be brought into con- 
ference, and the significant circumstance of the beginning of this war 

19 



20 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WDLSON. 

is that the Austrian and German Governments did not dare to discuss 
the demands of Serbia or the purposes which they had in view. It 
is universally admitted on the other side of the water that if they 
had ever gone into international conference on the Austrian demands, 
the war never would have been begun. There was an insistent 
■demand from London, for example, by the British foreign minister 
that the cabinets of Europe should be allowed time to confer with 
the Governments at Vienna and Berlin, and the Governments at 
Vienna and Berlin did not dare to admit time for discussion. 

I am recalling these circumstances, my fellow citizens, because I 
want to point out to you what apparently has escaped the attention 
of some of the critics of the league of nations, that the heart of the 
league of nations covenant does not lie in any of the portions which 
have been discussed in public debate. The great bulk of the pro- 
visions of that covenant contain these engagements and promises on 
the part of the states which undertake to become members of it : That 
in no circumstances will they go to war without first having done one 
or other of two things, without first either having submitted the 
question to arbitration, in which case they agree to abide by the 
results, or having submitted the question to discussion by the council 
of the league of nations, in which case they will allow six months for 
the discussion and engage not to go to war until three months after 
the council has announced its opinion upon the subject under dispute. 
The heart of the covenant of the league is that the nations solemnly 
covenant not to go to war for nine months after a controversy 
becomes acute. 

If there had been nine days of discussion, Germany would not 
have gone to war. If there had been nine days upon which to bring 
to bear the opinion of the world, the judgment of mankind, upon the 
purposes of those Governments, they never would have dared to 
execute those purposes. So that what it is important for us to 
remember is that when we sent those boys in khaki across the sea we 
promised them, we promised the world, that we would not conclude 
this conflict with a mere treaty of peace. We entered into solemn 
engagements with all the nations with whom we associated ourselves 
that we would bring about such a kind of settlement and such a con- 
cert of the purpose of nations that wars like this could not occur 
again. If this war has to be fought over again, then all our high 
ideals and purposes have been disappointed, for we did not go into 
this war merely to beat Germany. We went into this war to beat all 
purposes such as Germany entertained. 

You will remember how the conscience of mankind was shocked by 
what Germany did; not merely by the circumstance to which I have 
already adverted, that unconscionable demands were made upon a 
little nation which could not resist, but that immediately upon the 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 21 

beginning of the war the solemn engagements of treaty were cast on 
one side, and the chief representative of the Imperial Government of 
Germany said that when national purposes were under consideration 
treaties were mere scraps of paper, and immediately upon that decla- 
ration the German armies invaded the territories of Belgium which 
they had engaged should be inviolate, invaded those territories with 
the half-avowed purpose that Belgium was to be permanently 
retained by Germany in order that she should have the proper front- 
age on the sea and the proper advantage in her contest with the 
other nations of the world. The act which was characteristic of the 
beginning of this war was the violation of the territorial integrity of 
the Kingdom of Belgium. 

We are presently, my fellow countrymen, to have the very great 
pleasure of welcoming on this side of the sea the King and the 
Queen of the Belgians, and I, for one, am perfectly sure that we are 
going to make it clear to them that we have not forgotten the 
violation of Belgium, that we have not forgotten the intolerable 
wrongs which were put upon that suffering people. I have seen 
their devastated country. Where it was not actually laid in ruins,, 
every factory was gutted of its contents. All the machinery by 
which it would be possible for men to go to work again was taken 
away, and those parts of the machinery that could not be taken 
away were destroyed by experts who knew how to destroy them. 
Belgium was a very successful competitor of Germany in some lines 
of manufacture, and the German armies went there to see to it that 
that competition was removed. Their purpose was to crush the 
independent action of that little kingdom, not merely to use it as a 
gateway through which to attack France. And when they got into 
France, they not only fought the armies of France, but they put the 
coal mines of France out of commission, so that it will be a decade 
or more before France can supply herself with coal from her accus- 
tomed sources. You have heard a great deal about Article X of the 
covenant of the league of nations. Article X speaks the conscience 
of the world. Article X is the article which goes to the heart of this 
whole bad business, for that article says that the members of this 
league (that is intended to be all the great nations of the world) 
engage to respect and to preserve against all external aggression the 
territorial integrity and political independence of the nations con- 
cerned. That promise is necessary in order to prevent this sort of 
war from recurring, and we are absolutely discredited if we fought 
this war and then neglect the essential safeguard against it. You 
have heard it said, my fellow citizens, that we are robbed of some 
degree of our sovereign, independent choice by articles of that sort.. 
Every man who makes a choice to respect the rights of his neigh- 
bors deprives himself of absolute sovereignty, but he does it by 



22 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WDLSON. 

promising never to do wrong, and I can not for one see anything that 
robs me of any inherent right that I ought to retain when I promise 
that I will do right, when I promise that I will respect the thing 
which, being disregarded and violated, brought on a war in which 
millions of men lost their lives, in which the civilization of mankind 
was in the balance, in which there was the most outrageous exhibi- 
tion ever witnessed in the history of mankind of the rapacity and 
disregard for right of a great armed people. 

We engage in the first sentence of Article X to respect and preserve 
from external aggression the territorial integrity and the existing po- 
litical independence not only of the other member States, but of all 
States, and if any member of the league of nations disregards that 
promise, then what happens? The council of the league advises 
what should be done to enforce the respect for that covenant on the 
part of the nation attempting to violate it, and there is no compul- 
sion upon us to take that advice except the compulsion of our good 
conscience and judgment. It is perfectly evident that if, in the judg- 
ment of the people of the United States the council adjudged wrong 
and that this was not a case for the use of force, there would be no 
necessity on the part of the Congress of the United States to vote 
the use of force. But there could be no advice of the council on 
any such subject without a unanimous vote, and the unanimous vote 
includes our own, and if we accepted the advice we would be accept- 
ing our own advice. For I need not tell you that the representatives 
of the Government of the United States would not vote without 
instructions from their Government at home, and that what we 
united in advising we could be certain that the American people 
would desire to do. There is in that covenant not only not a sur- 
render of the independent judgment of the Government of the 
United States, but an expression of it, because that independent 
judgment would have to join with the judgment of the rest. 

But when is that judgment going to be expressed, my fellow 
citizens? Only after it is evident that every other resource has 
failed, and I want to call your attention to the central machinery 
of the league of nations. If any member of that league, or any 
nation not a member, refuses to submit the question at issue either 
to arbitration or to discussion by the council, there ensues auto- 
matically by the engagements of this covenant an absolute economic 
boycott. There will be no trade with that nation by any member of 
the league. There will be no interchange of communication by post 
or telegraph. There will be no travel to or from that nation. Its 
borders will be closed. No citizen of any other State will be allowed 
to enter it, and no one of its citizens will be allowed to leave it. It 
will be hermetically sealed by the united action of the most powerful 
nations in the world. And if this economic boycott bears with un- 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 23 

equal weight, the members of the league agree to support one another 
and to relieve one another in any exceptional disadvantages that may 
arise out of it. 

I want you to realize that this war was won not only by the armies 
of the world. It was won by economic means as well. Without the 
economic means the war would have been much longer continued. 
What happened was that Germany was shut off from the economic 
resources of the rest of the globe and she could not stand it. A nation 
that is boycotted is a nation that is in sight of surrender. Apply 
this economic, peaceful, silent, deadly remedy and there will be no 
need for force. It is a terrible remedy. It does not cost a life out- 
side the nation boycotted, but it brings a pressure upon that nation 
which, in my judgment, no modern nation could resist. 

I dare say that some of these ideas are new to you, because while 
it is true, as I said this forenoon in Columbus, that apparently no- 
body has taken the pains to see what is in this treaty, very few have 
taken the pains to see what is in the covenant of the league of nations. 
They have discussed, chiefly, three out of twenty-six articles, and the 
other articles contain this heart of the matter, that instead of war 
there shall be arbitration, instead of war there shall be discussion, 
instead of war there shall be the closure of intercourse, instead of 
war there shall be the irresistible pressure of the opinion of mankind. 
If I had done wrong, I would a great deal rather have a man shoot 
at me than stand me up for the judgment of my fellow men. I would 
a great deal rather see the muzzle of a gun than the look in their eyes. 
I would a great deal rather be put out of the world than live in the 
world boycotted and deserted. The most terrible thing is outlawry. 
The most formidable thing is to be absolutely isolated. And that 
is the kernel of this engagement. War is on the outskirts. War is 
a remote and secondary threat. War is a last resort. Nobody in 
his senses claims for the covenant of the league of nations that it is 
certain to stop war, but I confidently assert that it makes war vio- 
lently improbable, and even if we can not guarantee that it will stop 
war, we are bound in conscience to do our utmost in order to avoid 
it and prevent it. 

I was pointing out, my fellow citizens, this forenoon, that this 
covenant is part of a great document. I wish I had brought a copy 
with me to show you its bulk. It is an enormous volume, and most 
of the things you hear talked about in that treaty are not the essential 
things. ( v This is the first treaty in the history of civilization in which 
great powers have associated themselves together in order to protect 
the weak. ) I need not tell you that I speak with knowledge in this mat- 
ter, knowledge of the purpose of the men with whom the American 
delegates were associated at the peace table. They came there, every 
one that I consulted with, with the same idea, that wars had arisen 



" / 



/ 



24 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

in the past because the strong took advantage of the weak, and that 
the only way to stop wars was to bind ourselves together to protect 
the weak ; that the example of this war was the example which gave 
us the finger to point the way of escape : That as Austria and Ger- 
many had tried to put upon Serbia, so we must see to it that Serbia 
and the Slavic peoples associated with her, and the peoples of 
Roumania, and the people of Bohemia, and the peoples of Hungary 
and Austria for that matter, should feel assured in the future that 
the strength of the great powers was behind their liberty and their 
independence and was not intended to be used, and never should be 
used, for aggression against them. 

So when you read the covenant, read the treaty with it. I have no 
doubt that in this audience there are many men which come from, 
that ancient stock of Poland, for example, men in whose blood there 
is the warmth of old affections connected with that betrayed and 
ruined country, men whose memories run back to intolerable wrongs 
suffered by those they love in that country, and I call them to witness 
that Poland never could have won unity and independence for her- 
self, and those gentlemen sitting at Paris presented Poland with a 
unity which she could not have won and an independence which she 
can not defend unless the world guarantees it to her. There is one 
of the most noble chapters in the history of the world, that this war 
was concluded in order to remedy the wrongs which had bitten so 
deep into the experience of the weaker peoples of that great continent. 
The object of the war was to see to it that there was no more of that 
sort of wrong done. Now, when you have that picture in your mind, 
that this treaty was meant to protect those who could not protect 
themselves, turn the picture and look at it this way : 

Those very weak nations are situated through the very tract of 
country — between Germany and Sfemsa — which Germany had meant 
to conquer and dominate, and if the nations of the world do not main- 
tain their concert to sustain the independence and freedom of those 
peoples, Germany will yet have her will upon them, and we shall wit- 
ness the very interesting spectacle of having spent millions upon 
millions of American treasure and, what is much more precious, 
hundreds of thousands of American lives, to do a futile thing, to do 
a thing which we will then leave to be undone at the leisure of those 
who are masters of intrigue, at the leisure of those who are masters 
in combining wrong influences to overcome right influences, of those 
who are the masters of the very things that we hate and mean always 
to fight. For, my fellow citizens, if Germany should ever attempt 
that again, whether we are in the league of nations or not, we will 
join to prevent it. We do not stand off and see murder done. We 
do not profess to be the champions of liberty and then consent to see 
liberty destroyed. We are not the friends and advocates of free 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 25 

government and then willing to stand by and see free government 
die before our eyes. If a power such as Germany was, but thank 
God no longer is, were to do this thing upon the fields of Europe, 
then America would have to look to it that she did not do it also 
upon the fields of the Western Hemisphere, and we should at last be 
face to face with a power which at the outset we could have crushed, 
and which now it is within our choice to keep within the harness of 
civilization. 

I am- discussing this thing with you, my fellow citizens, as if I 
had a doubt of what the verdict of the American people would be. I 
have not the slightest doubt. I just wanted to have the pleasure 
of pointing out to you how absolutely ignorant of the treaty and 
of the covenant some of the men are who have been opposing them. 
If they do read the English language, they do not understand the 
English language as I understand it. If they have really read this 
treaty and this covenant they only amaze me by their inability to 
understand what is plainly expressed. My errand upon this journey 
is not to argue these matters, but to recall you to the real issues 
which are involved. And one of the things that I have most at 
heart in this report to my fellow citizens is that they should forget 
what party I belong to and what party they belong to. I am mak- 
ing this journey as a democrat, but I am spelling it with a little 
" d," and I do not want anybody to remember, so far as this errand 
is concerned, that it is ^ver spelt with a big D. I am making this 
journey as an American and as a champion of rights which America 
believes in; and I need not tell you that as compared with the 
importance of America the importance of the Democratic Party 
and the importance of the Republican Party and the importance of 
every other party is absolutely negligible. Parties, my fellow citi- 
zens, are intended to embody in action different policies of govern- 
ment. They are not, when properly used, intended to traverse the 
principles which underlie government, and the principles which 
underlie the Government of the United States have been familiar 
to us ever since we were children. You have been bred, I have no 
doubt, as I have been bred, in the revolutionary school of American 
thought. I mean that school of American thought which takes its 
inspiration from the days of the American Revolution. There were 
only three million of us then, but we were ready to stand out against 
the world for liberty. There are more than a hundred million of 
us now, and we are ready to insist that everywhere men shall be 
champions of liberty. 

I want you to notice another interesting point that is never dilated 
upon in connection with the league of nations. I am treading now 
upon delicate ground and I must express myself with caution. 
There were a good many delegations that visited Paris who wanted 
to be heard by the peace conference who had real causes to present 



26 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WDLSON. 

which ought to be presented to the view of the world, but we had 
to point out to them that they did not happen, unfortunately, to 
come within the area of settlement, that their questions were not ques- 
tions which were necessarily drawn into the things that we were de- 
ciding. We were sitting there with the pieces of the Austro-Hun- 
garian Empire in our hands. It had fallen apart. It never was nat- 
urally cohesive. We were sitting there with various dispersed assets 
of the German Empire in our hands, and with regard to every one of 
them we had to determine what we were going to do with them, but 
we did not have our own dispersed assets in our hands. We did not 
have the assets of the nations which constituted the body of nations 
associated against Germany to dispose of, and therefore we had often, 
with whatever regret, to turn away from questions that ought some 
day to be - discussed and settled and upon which the opinion of the 
world ought to be brought to bear. 

Therefore, I want to call your attention, if you will turn to it when 
you go home, to Article XI, following Article X, of the covenant 
of the league of nations. That article, let me say, is the favorite 
article in the treaty, so far as I am concerned. It says that every 
matter which is likely to affect the peace of the world is everybody's 
business; that it shall be the friendly right of any nation to call 
attention in the league to anything that is likely to affect the peace 
of the world or the good understanding between nations, upon 
which the peace of the world depends, whether that matter imme- 
diately concerns the nation drawing attention to it or not. In other 
words, at present we have to mind our own business. Under the 
covenant of the league of nations we can mind other peoples' busi- 
ness, and anything that affects the peace of the world, whether we 
are parties to it or not, can by our delegates be brought to the at- 
tention of mankind. We can force a nation on the other side of 
the globe to bring to that bar of mankind any wrong that is afoot 
in that part of the world which is likely to affect good understanding 
between nations, and we can oblige them to show cause why it should 
not be remedied. There is not an oppressed people in the world 
which can not henceforth get a hearing at that forum, and j 7 ou 
know, my fellow citizens, what a hearing will mean if the cause of 
those people is just. The one thing that those who are doing injus- 
tice have most reason to dread is publicity and discussion, because 
if you are challenged to .give a reason why you are doing a wrong 
thing it has to be an exceedingly good reason, and if you give a 
bad reason you confess judgment and the opinion of mankind goes 
against you. 

At present what is the state of international law and understand- 
ing ? No nation has the right to call attention to anything that does 
not directly affect its own affairs. If it does, it can not only be told 



ADDKESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 27 

to mind its own business, but it risks the cordial relationship between 
itself and the nation whose affairs it draws under discussion; where- 
as, under Article XI the very sensible provision is made that the 
peace of the world transcends all the susceptibilities of nations and 
governments, and that they are obliged to consent to discuss and ex- 
plain anything which does affect the understanding between nations. 

Not only that, but there is another thing in this covenant which 
cures one of the principal difficulties we encountered at Paris. I 
need not tell you that at every turn in those discussions we came 
across some secret treaty, some understanding that had never been 
made public before, some understanding which embarrassed the 
whole settlement. I think it will not be improper for me to refer to 
one of them. When we came to the settlement of the Shantung mat- 
ter with regard to China, we found that Great Britain and France 
were under explicit treaty obligation to Japan that she should get 
exactly what she got in the treaty with Germany, and the most that 
the United states could do was to urge upon Japan the promise, 
which she gave, that she would not take advantage of those portions 
of the treaty but would return to the Republic of China, without 
qualification, the sovereignty which Germany had enjoyed in Shan- 
tung Province. We have had repeated assurances since then that 
Japan means to fulfill those promises in absolute good faith. But 
my present point is that there stood at the very gate of that settle- 
ment a secret treaty between Japan and two of the great powers en- 
gaged in this war on our side. We could not ask them to disregard 
those promises. This war had been fought in part because of the re- 
fusal to observe the fidelity which is involved in a promise, because 
of the failure to regard the sacredness of treaties, and this covenant 
of the league of nations provides that no secret treaty shall have any 
validity. It provides in explicit terms that every treaty, every inter- 
national understanding, shall be registered with the secretary of the 
league, that it shall be published as soon as possible after it is there 
registered, and that no treaty that is not there registered will be re- 
garded by any of the nations engaged in the covenant. So that we 
not only have the right to discuss anything, but we make everything 
open for discussion. If this covenant accomplished little more than 
the abolition of private arrangements between great powers, it would 
have gone far toward stabilizing the peace of the world and securing 
justice, which it has been so difficult to secure so long as nations 
could come to secret understandings with one another. 

When you look at the covenant of the league of nations thus, in the 
large, you wonder why it is a bogey to anybody. You wonder what 
influences have made gentlemen afraid of it. You wonder why it 
is not obvious to everybody as it is to those who study it with dis- 
interested thought, that this is the central and essential covenant of 



28 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

the whole peace. As I was saying this forenoon, I can come through 
a double row of men in khaki and acknowledge their salute with a 
free heart, because I kept my promise to them. I told them when 
they went to this war that it was a war not only to beat Germany but 
to prevent any subsequent wars of this kind. I can look all the 
mothers of this country in the face and all the sisters and the wives 
and the sweethearts and say, " The boys will not have to do this 
again." 

You would think to hear some of the men who discuss this cov- 
enant that it is an arrangement for sending our men abroad again 
just as soon as possible. It is the only conceivable arrangement 
which will prevent our sending our men abroad again very soon, and 
if I may use a very common expression, I w y ould say if it is not to be 
this arrangement, what arrangement do you suggest to secure the 
peace of the world ? It is a case of "put up or shut up." Opposition 
is not going to save the world. Negations are not going to construct 
the policies of mankind. A great plan is the only thing that can 
defeat a great plan. The only triumphant ideas in this world are 
the ideas that are organized for battle. The only thing that wins 
against a program is a better program. If this is not the way to se- 
cure peace, I beg that the way will be pointed out. If we must re- 
ject this way, then I beg that before I am sent to ask Germany to 
make a new kind of peace with us I should be given specific instruc- 
tions what kind of peace it is to be. If the gentlemen who do not 
like what was done at Paris think they can do something better, I 
beg that they will hold their convention soon and do it now. They 
can not in conscience or good faith deprive us of this great work of 
peace without substituting some other that is better. 

So, my fellow citizens, I look forward with profound gratification 
to the time which I believe will now not much longer be delayed, 
when the American people can say to their fellows in all parts of the 
Avorld, " We are the friends of liberty ; we have joined with the rest 
of mankind in securing the guarantees of liberty ; we stand here with 
you the eternal champions of what is right, and may God keep us in 
the covenant that we have formed." 



ADDRESS AT LUNCHEON AT HOTEL STATLER, 

ST. LOUIS, MO., 

SEPTEMBER 5, 1919. 



Mr. Johnson, your honor Mr. Mayor, ladies and gentlemen, it is 
with great pleasure that I find myself in St. Louis again, because I 
have always found it possible in St. Louis to discuss serious questions 
in' a way that gets mind in contact with mind, instead of that other 
less desirable thing, passion in contact with passion. I am glad to* 
hear the mayor say, and I believe that it is true, that politics is ad- 
journed. Party politics has no place, my fellow citizens, in the sub- 
ject we are now obliged to discuss and to decide. Politics in the 
wider sense has a great deal to do with it. The politics of the world, 
the policy of mankind, the concert of the methods by which the 
world is to be bettered, that concert of will and of action which will 
make every nation a nobler instrument of Divine Providence — that 
is world politics. 

I have sometimes heard gentlemen discussing the questions that 
are now before us with a distinction drawn between nationalism and 
internationalism in these matters. It is very difficult for me to fol- 
low their distinction. The greatest nationalist is the man who wants 
his nation to be the greatest nation, and the greatest nation is the 
nation which penetrates to the heart of its duty and mission among 
the nations of the world. With every flash of insight into the great 
politics of mankind, the nation that has that vision is elevated to a 
place of influence and power which it can not get by arms, which it 
can not get by commercial rivalry, which it can get by no other way 
than by that spiritual leadership which comes from a profound un- 
derstanding of the problems of humanity. It is in the light of ideas 
of this sort that I conceive it a privilege to discuss the matters that 
I have come away from Washington to discuss. 

I have come away from Washington to discuss them because ap- 
parently it is difficult to discuss them in Washington. The whole 
subject is surrounded with a mist which it is difficult to penetrate. I 
brought home with me from the other side of the water a great docu- 
ment, a great human document, but after you hear it talked about 

29 



30 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WDLSON. 

in Washington for awhile you think that it has just about three or 
four clauses in it. You fancy that it has a certain Article X in it, 
that it has something about Shantung in it, that it has something 
about the Monroe doctrine in it, that it has something about quitting, 
withdrawing from the league, showing that you do not want to play 
the game. I do not hear about anything else in it. Why, my fellow 
citizens, those are mere details and incidents of a great human enter- 
prise, and I have sought the privilege of telling you what I conceive 
that human enterprise to be. 

The war that has just been finished was no accident. Any man 
who had followed the politics of the world up to that critical break 
must have known that that was the logical outcome of the processes 
that had preceded it, must have known that the nations of the world 
were preparing for that very thing and were expecting it. One of 
the most interesting things that I realized after I got to the other 
side of the water was that the mental attitude of the French people 
■with regard to the settlement of this war was largely determined by 
the fact that for nearly 50 years they had expected it, that for nearly 
50 years they had dreaded, by the exercise of German force, the very 
thing that had happened, and their constant theme was, " We must 
devise means by which this intolerable fear will be lifted from our 
hearts. We can not, we will not, live another 50 years under the cloud 
of that terror." The terror had been there all the time and the war 
was its flame and consummation. It had been expected, because the 
politics of Europe were based upon a definite conception. That con- 
ception was that the strong had all the rights and that all that the 
weak could enjoy was what the strong permitted them to enjoy; that 
no nation had any right that could not be asserted by the exercise of 
force, and that the real politics of Europe consisted in determining- 
how many of the weak elements in the European combination of 
families and of nations should be under the influence and control of 
one set of nations and how many of those elements should be under 
the influence and control of another set of nations. 

One of the centers of all the bad business was in that town of Con- 
stantinople. I do not suppose that intrigue was ever anywhere else 
reduced .to such a consummate art or practiced with such ardor and 
subtlety as in Constantinople. That was because Constantinople was/ 
the key to the weak part of Europe. That was where the pawns 
were, not the kings and the queens and the castles and the bishops 
and the rest of the chess game of politics, but the little pawns. They 
made the openings for the heavier pieces. Their maneuvers de- 
termined the arrangement of the board, and those who controlled 
the pawns controlled the outcome of the whole effort to checkmate 
and to match and to capture and to take advantage. The shrewdest 
politicians in the diplomatic service of the several nations were put 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 33 

That brings me, my fellow citizens, to the guarantee of this whole 
thing. We said that we were going to fight this war for the pur- 
pose of seeing to it that the mothers and sisters and fathers of this 
land, and the sweethearts and wives, did not have to send their lads 
over on the other side of the sea to fight any more, and so we took 
part in an arrangement by which justice was to be secured through- 
out the world. The rest of the world, partly at our suggestion, said 
'" Yes " and said it gladly ; said " Yes, we will go into the partnership 
to see that justice is maintained;" and then I come home and hear 
some gentlemen say, "But will we? '" Are we interested in justice? 
The treaty of peace, as I have just said to you, is based upon the pro- 
tection of the weak against the strong, and there is only one force that 
can protect the weak against the strong, and that is the universal 
concert of the strength of mankind. That is the league of nations. 

But I beg that you will not conceive of the league of nations as a 
combination of the world for war, for that is exactly what it is not. 
It is a combination of the world for arbitration and discussion. I 
was taking the pains the other day to make a sort of table of con- 
tents of the covenant of the league of nations, and I found that two- 
thirds of its provisions were devoted to setting up a system of arbi- 
tration and discussion in the world. Why, these are the facts, my 
fellow citizens : The members of the league agree that no one of them 
will ever go to war about anything without first doing one or other 
of two things : without either submitting the question to arbitration, 
in which case they agree to abide by the decision of the arbitrators 
.absolutely, or submitting it to discussion by the council of the league 
of nations, in which case they agree that, no matter what the opinion 
expressed by the council may be, they will allow six months for the 
discussion, and, whether they are satisfied with the conclusion or not, 
will not go to war in less than three months after the rendering of the 
opinion. I think we can take it for granted that the preliminaries 
would take two or three months, in which case you have a whole 
year of discussion even when you do not get arbitration ; and I want 
to call you to witness that in almost every international controversy 
which has been submitted to thorough canvass by the opinion of the 
world it has become impossible for the result to be war. War is a 
process of heat. Exposure is a process of cooling ; and what is pro- 
posed in this is that every hot thing shall be spread out in the cool- 
ing air of the opinion of the world and after it is thoroughly cooled 
off, then let the nations concerned determine whether they are going 
to fight about it or not. 

And notice the sanction. Any member of the league which breaks 
these promises with regard to arbitration or discussion is to be 
deemed thereby to have committed an act of war against the other 

141677— S. Doc. 120. 66-1 3 



34 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WDLSON. 

members of the league; not merely to have done an immoral thing, 
but by refusing to obey those processes to have committed an act of 
war and put itself out of court. You know what then happens. 
You say, " Yes, we form an army and go and fight them." Not at 
all. We shut their doors and lock them in. We boycott them. 
Just so soon as that is done they can not ship cargoes out or receive 
them shipped in. They can not send a telegraphic message. They 
can not send or receive a letter. Nobody can leave their territory 
and nobody can enter their territory. They are absolutely boycotted 
by the rest of mankind. I do not think that after that remedy it 
will be necessary to do any fighting at all. What brought Germany 
to her knees was, not only the splendid fighting of the incomparable 
men who met her armies, but that her doors were locked and she 
could not get supplies from any part of the world. There were a 
few doors open, doors to some Swedish ore, for example, that she 
needed for making munitions, and that kept her going for a time ; 
but the Swedish door would be shut this time. There would not be 
any door open, and that brings a nation to its senses just as suffoca- 
tion removes from the individual all inclination to fight. 

That is the league of nations, an agreement to arbitrate or dis- 
cuss, and an agreement that if you do not arbitrate or discuss, you 
shall be absolutely boycotted and starved out. There is hardly a 
European nation, my fellow citizens, that is of a fighting inclination 
which has enough food to eat without importing food, and it will 
be a very persuasive argument that it has nothing to eat, because you 
can not fight on an empty stomach any more than you can worship 
God on an empty stomach. 

When Ave add to that some other very interesting particulars, I 
think the league of nations becomes a very interesting thing in- 
deed. You have heard of Article X, and I am going to speak about 
that in a minute, but read Article XI, because, really, there are other 
articles in the covenant ! Article XI says — I am not quoting its 
language, but its substance — that anything that is likely to affect the 
peace of the world or the good understanding upon which the peace 
of the world depends shall be everybody's business; that any nation, 
the littlest nation at the table, can stand up and challenge the right 
of the strongest nation there to keep on in a course of action or policy 
which is likely to disturb the peace of the world, and that it shall 
be its " friendly right " to do so. Those are the words. It can not 
be regarded as an hostile or unfriendly act. It is its friendly right 
to do that, and if you will not give the secret away, I wrote those 
words myself. T wanted it to be our friendly right and everybody's 
friendly right to discuss everything that was likely to affect the 
peace of the world, because that is everybody's business. It is every- 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON". 35 

body's business to see that nothing happens that does disturb the 
peace of the world. 

And there is added to this particular this very interesting thing: 
There can hereafter be no secret treaties. There were nations repre- 
sented around that board — I mean the board at which the commission 
on the league of nations sat, where 14 nations were represented — 
there were nations represented around that board who had entered 
into many a secret treaty and understanding, and they made not the 
least objection to promising that hereafter no secret treaty should 
have any validity whatever. The provision of the covenant is that 
every treaty or international understanding shall be " registered," I 
believe the word is, with the general secretary of the league, that the 
general secret ary shall publish it in full just so soon as it is possible 
for him to publish it, and that no treaty shall be valid which is not 
thus registered. It is like our arrangements with regard to mort- 
gages on real estate, that until they are registered nobody else need 
pay any attention to them. So with the treaties: Until they are 
registered in this office of the league, nobody, not even the parties 
themselves, can insist upon their execution. You have cleared the 
deck thereby of the most dangerous thing and the most embarrassing 
thing that has hitherto existed in international politics. 

It was very embarrassing, my fellow citizens, when you thought 
you were approaching an ideal solution of a particular question to 
find that some of your principal colleagues had given the whole 
thing awa}^. And that leads me to speak just in passing of what 
has given a great many people natural distress. I mean the Shantung 
settlement, the settlement with regard to a portion of the Province 
of Shantung in China. Great Britain and, subsequently, France, 
as everybody now knows, in order to make it more certain that Japan 
would come into the war and so assist to clear the Pacific of the 
German fleets, had promised that any rights that Germany had 
in China should, in the case of the victory of the Allies, pass to 
Japan. There was no qualification in the promise. She was to get 
exactly what Germany had, and so the only thing that was possible 
was to induce Japan to promise — and I want to say in fairness, for 
it would not be fair if I did not say it, that Japan did very hand- 
somely make the promise which was requested of her — that she would 
retain in Shantung none of the sovereign rights which Germany had 
enjoyed there, but would return the sovereignty without qualifica- 
tion to China and retain in Shantung Province only what other 
nationalities had alreadv had elsewhere, economic rights with re- 
gard to the development and administration of the railway and of 
certain mines which had become attached to the railway. That is her 
promise, and personally I have not the slightest doubt that she will 
fulfill that promise. She can not fulfill it right now because the 



36 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

thing does not go into operation until three months after the treaty 
is ratified, so that we must not be too impatient about it. But she 
will fulfill that promise. 

Suppose that we said that Ave would not assent. England and 
France must assent, and if we are going to get Shantung Province 
back for China and these gentlemen do not want to engage in 
foreign wars, how are they going to get it back? Their idea of not 
getting into trouble seems to be to stand for the largest possible num- 
ber of unworkable propositions. It is all very well to talk about 
standing by China, but how are you standing by China when you 
withdraw from the only arrangement by which China can be assisted. 
If you are China's friend, then do not go into the council where you 
can act as - China's friend! If you are China's friend, then put her 
in a position where even the concessions which have been made need 
not be carried out ! If you are China's friend, scuttle and run ! That 
is not the kind of American I am. 

Now, just a word about Article X. Permit me. if you will, to 
recur to what I said at the opening of these somewhat disjointed 
remarks. I said that the treaty was intended to destroy one system 
and substitute another. That other system was based upon the 
principle that no strong power need respect the territorial integrity 
or the political independence of any weak power. I need not confine 
the phraseology to that. It was based upon the principle that no 
power is obliged to respect the territorial integrity or the political 
independence of any other power if it has the force necessary to 
disregard it. So that Article X cuts at the very heart, and is the 
only instrument that will cut to the very heart, of the old system. 
Remember that if this covenant is adopted by the number of nations 
which it probably will be adopted by, it means that every nation 
except Germany and Turkey, because we have already said we would 
let Austria come in (Germany has to undergo a certain period of 
probation to see whether she has really experienced a change of 
heart and effected a genuine change of constitutional provision) — 
it means that all the nations of the world, except one strong and 
one negligible one, agree that they will respect and preserve against 
externa] aggression the territorial integrity and existing political 
independence of the other nations of the world. You would think 
from some of the discussions that the emphasis is on the word 
w * preserve." 

We are partners with the rest of the world in respecting the terri- 
torial integrity and political independence of others. They are all 
under solemn bonds themselves to respect and to preserve those 
things, and if they do not preserve them, if they do not respect them 
or preserve them, what happens? The council of the league then 
advises the several members of the league what it is necessary to do, 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 37 

I can testify from having sat at the board where the instrument was 
drawn that advice means advice. I supposed it did before I returned 
home, but I found some gentlemen doubted it. Advice means advice, 
and the advice can not be given without the concurrent vote of the * 
representative of the United States. "Ah," but somebody says, 
■' suppose we are a party to the quarrel ! r I can not suppose that, 
because I know that the United States is not going to disregard the 
territorial integrity or the political independence of any other 
nation, but for the sake of the argument suppose that we are a party. 
Very Avell then, the scrap is ours anyway. For what these gentlemen 
are afraid of is that Ave are going to get into trouble. If Ave are a 
party, Ave are in trouble already, and if Ave are not a party, Ave can 
control the advice of the council by our vote. To my mind, that is 
a little like an open and shut game ! I am not afraid of advice Avhich 
Ave give ourselA T es; and yet that is the whole of the bugaboo which 
these gentlemen have been parading before you. 

The solemn thing about Article X is the first sentence, not the 
second sentence. The first sentence says that we will respect and 
preserve against external aggression the territorial integrity and 
existing political independence of other nations; and let me stop a 
moment on the Avords "external aggression." Why Avere they put in ? 
Because every man who sat at that board held that the right of reA 7 o- 
lution was sacred and must not be interfered with. Any kind of a 
roAv can happen inside and it is nobody's right to interfere. The 
only thing that there is any right to object to or interfere with is 
external aggression, by some outside poAver undertaking to take a 
piece of territory or to interfere with the internal political arrange- 
ments of the country Avhich is suffering from the aggression; be- 
cause territorial integrity does not mean that you can not invade 
another country; it means that you can not invade it and stay 
there. I haA r e not impaired the territorial integrity of your backyard 
if I walk into it, but I very much impair it if I insist upon staying 
there and will not get out, and the impairment of integrity contem- 
plated in this article is the kind of impairment as the seizure of 
territory, as an attempt at annexation, as an attempt at continuing 
domination either of the territory itself or of the methods of govern- 
ment inside that territory. 

When you read Article X, therefore, you will see that it is nothing 
but the inevitable, logical center of the whole system of the covenant 
of the league of nations, and I stand for it absolutely. If it should 
ever in any important respect be impaired, I would feel like asking 
the Secretary of War to get the boys who went across the water to 
fight together on some field where I could go and see them, and I 
would stand up before them and say, u Boys, I told you before you 
Avent across the seas that this Avas a Avar against Avars, and I did 



38 ADDRESSES OE PRESIDENT WILSON. ' 

my best to fulfill the promise, but I am obliged to come to you in 
mortification and shame and say I have not been able to fulfill the 
promise. You are betrayed. Yon fought for something that you 
did not get." And the glory of the armies and the navies of the 
United States is gone like a dream in the night, and there ensues 
upon it, in the suitable darkness of the night, the nightmare of dread 
which lay upon the nations before this war came; and there Avill 
come sometime, in the vengeful Providence of God, another struggle 
in which, not a few hundred thousand fine men from America will 
have to die, but as many millions as are necessary to accomplish the 
final freedom of the peoples of the world. 



ADDRESS AT COLISEUM, ST. LOUIS, MO., 

SEPTEMBER 5, 1919. 



Mr. Chairman, Gov. Gardner, my fellow countrymen, this is much 
too solemn an occasion to care how we look ; we ought to care how we 
think. [The photographer had just asked the audience to sit still for 
a picture.] I have come here to-night to ask permission to discuss 
with you some of the very curious aberrations of thinking that have 
taken place in this country of late. I have sought — I think I have 
sought without prejudice — to understand the point of view of the 
men who have been opposing the treaty and the covenant of the 
league of nations. Many of them are men whose judgment and 
whose patriotic feeling I have been accustomed to admire and respect, 
and yet I must admit to you, my fellow countrymen, that it is very 
hard for me to believe that they have followed their line of thinking 
to its logical and necessary conclusion, because when you reflect upon 
their position, it is either that we ought to reject this treaty altogether 
or that Ave ought to change it in such a way as will make it necessary 
to reopen negotiations with Germany and reconsider the settlements 
of the peace in many essential particulars. We can not do the latter 
alone, and other nations will not join us in doing it. The only alter- 
native is to reject the peace and to do what some of our fellow country- 
men have been advising us to do, stand alone in the world. 

I am going to take the liberty to-night of pointing out to }^ou what 

this alternative means. I know the course of reasoning which is 

either uttered or implicit in this advice when it is given us by some 

of the men who propose this course. They believe that the United 

States is so strong, so financially strong, so industrially strong, if 

necessary so physically strong, that it can impose its will upon the 

world if it is necessary for it to stand out against the world, and they 

believe that the processes of peace can be processes of domination and 

antagonism, instead of processes of cooperation and good feeling, I 

therefore want to point out to you that only those who are ignorant 

of the world can believe that any nation, even so great a nation as the 

United States, can stand alone and play a single part in the history of 

mankind. 

39 



40 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

Begin with a single circumstance; for I have not come here to-night 
to indulge in any kind of oratory. I have come here to-night to 
present to you certain hard facts which I want you to take home with 
you and think about. I suppose that most of you realize that it is 
going to be very difficult for the other nations that were engaged in 
this war to get financially on their feet again. I dare say you read 
the other day the statement of Mr. Herbert Hoover's opinion, an 
opinion which I always greatly respect, that it will be necessary for 
the United States immediately to advance four or five billion dollars 
for the rehabilitation of credit and industry on the other side of the 
water, and I must say to you that I learned nothing in Paris which 
would lead me to doubt that conclusion. I think the statement of the 
sum is a reasonable and conservative statement. If the world is going 
bankrupt, if credit is going to be destroyed, if the industry of the rest 
of the world is going to be interrupted, our market is confined to the 
United States. Trade will be impossible, except within our own 
borders. If we are to save our own markets and rehabilitate our own 
industries, we must save the financial situation of the world and 
rehabilitate the markets of the world. Very well, what do these gen- 
tlemen propose? That we should do that, for we can not escape 
doing it. 

Face to face with a situation of this kind, we are not. let us assume, 
partners in the execution of this treaty. What is one of the central 
features of the execution of this treaty? It is the application of the 
reparation clauses. Germany can not pay for this war unless her 
industries are revived, and the treaty of peace sets up a great com- 
mission known as the Reparation Commission, in which it was in- 
tended that there should be a member from the United States as well 
as from other countries. The business of this commission will be in 
part to see that the industries of Germany are revived in order that 
Germany may pay this great debt which she owes to civilization. 
That Reparation Commission can determine the currents of trade, 
the conditions of international credit: it can determine how much 
Germany is going to buy. where it is going to buy, how it is going to 
pay for it. and if we must, to save ourselves, contribute to the financial 
rehabilitation of the world, then without being members of this 
partnership we must put our money in the hands of those who want 
to get the markets that belong to us. That is what these gentlemen 
call playing a lone hand. It is indeed playing a lone hand. It is 
playing a hand that is frozen out ! We must contribute the money 
which other nations are to use in order to rehabilitate their industry 
and credit, and we must make them our antagonists and rivals and 
not our partners! I put that proposition to any business man. young 
or old. in the United States and ask him how he likes it. and whether 
he considers that a useful way for the United States to stand alone. 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 41 

We have got to carry this burden of reconstitutio n whether we will 
or not or be ruined, and the question is. Shall we carry it and be ruined 
anyhow ? For that is what these gentlemen propose, that at every 
point we shall be embarrassed by the whole financial affairs of the 
'world being in the hands of other nations. 

As I was saying at the luncheon that I had the pleasure of eating 
with the chamber of commerce to-day, the Avhole aspect of the matter 
is an aspect of ignorance. The men who propose these things do not 
understand the selfish interests of the United States, because here 
is the rest of the picture : Hot rivalries, burning suspicions, jealousies, 
arrangements made everywhere if possible to shut us out, because if 
we will not come in as equals we ought to be shut out. If we are 
going to keep out of this thing in order to prey upon the rest of 
the world, then I think we ought to be frozen out of it. That is 
not the temper of the United States, and it is not like the United 
States to be ignorant enough to think any such thoughts, because we 
know that partners profit and enemies lose the game. But that is 
not all of the picture, my fellow citizens. If every nation is going to 
be our rival, if every nation is going to dislike and distrust us, and 
that will be the case, because having trusted us beyond measure the 
reaction will occur be}^ond measure (as it stands now they trust us, 
they look to us, they long that we shall undertake anything for their 
assistance rather than that any other nation should undertake it) — 
if we say, " Xo, we are in this world to live by ourselves, and get what 
we can out of it by any selfish processes, " then the reaction will 
change the whole heart and attitude of the world toward this great, 
free, justice-loving people, and after you have changed the attitude 
of the world, what have you produced? Peace? Why, my fellow 
citizens, is there any man here or any woman, let me say is there any 
child here, who does not know that the seed of war in the modern 
world. is industrial and commercial rivalry? The real reason that 
the war that we have just finished took place was that Germany was 
afraid her commercial rivals were going to get the better of her, and 
the reason why some nations went into the war against Germany 
was that they thought Germany would get the commercial advantage 
of them. The seed of the jealousy, the seed of the deep-seated hatred 
was hot, successful commercial and industrial rivalry. 

Why, what did the Germans do when they got into Belgium? I 
have just seen that suffering country. Most of the Belgian factories 
are standing. You do not witness in Belgium what you witness in 
France, except upon certain battlefields — factories destroyed, whole 
towns wiped out. No; the factories are there, the streets are clear, 
the people are there, but go in the factories. Every piece of ma- 
chinery that could be taken away has been taken away. If it was 



42 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

too big to take away, experts directed the way in which it should be 
injured so it could never be used again, and that was because there 
were textile industries and iron industries in Belgium which the 
Germans hated Belgium for having, because they were better than 
the German and outdid them in the markets of the world. This war, 
in its inception was a commercial and industrial war. It was not a 
political war. 

Very well, then, if we must stand apart and be the hostile rivals of 
the rest of the world, then we must do something else. We must be 
plrysically ready for anything that comes. We must have a great 
standing army. We must see to it that every man in America is 
trained to arms. We must see to it that there are munitions and 
guns enough for an army that means a mobilized nation; that they 
are not only laid up in store, but that they are kept up to date ; that 
they are ready to use to-morrow ; that we are a nation in arms ; be- 
cause you can not be unfriendly to everybody without being ready 
that everybody shall be unfriendly to you. And what does that 
mean? Reduction of taxes? No. Not only the continuation of the 
present taxes but the increase of the present taxes; and it means 
something very much more serious than that. We can stand that, so 
far as the expense is concerned, if we care to keep up the high cost 
of living and enjoy the other luxuries that we have recently enjo} r ed, 
but, what is much more serious than that, we have got to have the sort 
of organization which is the only kind of organization that can 
handle arms of that sort. We may say what we please of the Ger- 
man Government that has been destroyed, my fellow citizens, but it 
was the only sort of government that could handle an armed nation. 
You can not handle an armed nation b} r vote. You can not handle an 
armed nation if it is democratic, because democracies do not go to 
war that way. You have got to have a concentrated, militaristic 
organization of government to run a nation of that sort. You have 
got to think of the President of the United States, not as the chief 
counselor of the Nation, elected for a little while, but as the man 
meant constantly and every day to be the Commander in Chief of 
the Army and Navy of the United States, ready to order them to 
any part of the world where the threat of war is a menace to his own 
people. And you can not do that under free debate. You can not do 
that under public counsel. Plans must be kept secret. Knowledge 
must be accumulated by a system which we have condemned, because 
we have called it a spying system. The more polite call it a sj^stem 
of intelligence. You can not watch other nations with your unas- 
sisted eye. You have got to watch them by secret agencies planted 
everywhere. Let me testify to this, my fellow citizens: I not only 
did not know it until we got into this war, but I did not believe it 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON". 43 

when I was told that it was true, that Germany was not the only coun- 
try that maintained a secret service. Every country in Europe main- 
tained it, because they had to be ready for Germany's spring upon 
them, and the only difference between the German secret service' and 
the other secret services was that the German secret service found 
out more than the others did, and therefore Germany sprang upon 
the other nations unawares, and they were not read} 7 for it. 

And you know what the effect of a military government is upon 
social questions. You know how impossible it is to effect social 
reform if everybody must be under orders from the Government. 
You know how impossible it is, in short, to have a free nation, if it 
is a military nation and under military order. You may say, " You 
have been on the other side of the water and got bad dreams." I 
have got no dreams at all. I am telling you the things, the evidence 
of which I have seen with awakened eyes and not with sleeping eyes, 
and I know that this country, if it wishes to stand alone, must stand 
alone as part of a world in arms. Because, ladies and gentlemen — 
I do not say it because I am an American and my heart is full of 
the same pride that fills yours with regard to the power and spirit 
of this great nation, but merely because it is a fact which I think 
everybody would admit, outside of America, as well as inside of 
America — the organization contemplated by the league of nations 
without the United States would merely be an alliance and not a 
league of nations. It would be an alliance in which the partnership 
would be between the more powerful European nations and Japan, 
and the other party to the world arrangement, the antagonist, the 
disassociated party, the party standing off to be watched by the 
alliance, would be the United States of America. There can be no 
league of nations in the true sense without the partnership of this 
great people. 

Xow, let us mix the selfish with the unselfish. If you do not want 
me to be too altruistic, let me be very practical. If we are partners, 
let me predict we will be the senior partner. The financial leader- 
ship will be ours. The industrial primacy will be ours. The com- 
mercial advantage will be ours. The other countries of the world 
are looking to us for leadership and direction. Very well, then, if 
I am to compete with the critics of this league and of this treat} 7 as 
a selfish American, I say I want to get in and get in as quick as I can. 
I want to be inside and know how the thing is run and help to run it. 
You have the alternative, armed isolation or peaceful partnership. 
Can any sane man hesitate as to the choice, and can any sane man 
ask the question, Which is the way of peace? I have heard some 
men say with an amazing ignorance that the covenant of the league 
of nations was an arrangement for war. Very well, then, what 
would the other arrangement be ? An arrangement for peace ? For 



44 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

kindliness? For cooperation? Would everybody beckon us to their 
markets? Would everybody say, " Come and tell us how to use your 
money?' 1 Would everybody come and say, "Tell us how much of 
your goods you want us to take; tell us how much of what Germany 
is producing you would like when we want it ? " I can not bring 
my credulity up to that point. I have reached years of discretion, 
and I have met some very young men who knew a great deal more 
than some very old men. 

I want you therefore, after seeing this very ugly picture that I 
have painted — for it is an ugly picture; it is a picture from which 
one turns away with distaste and disgust and says, " That is not 
America ; it is not like anything that we have ever conceived " — I 
want you to look at the other side. I wonder if some of the gentle- 
men who are commenting upon this treaty ever read it ! If anybody 
will tell me which of them has not, I will send him a copy. It is 
written in two languages. On this side is the English and on that 
side is the French, and since it is evident that some men do not 
understand English, I hope that they understand French. There 
are excellent French dictionaries by which they can dig out the mean- 
ing, if they can not understand English. It is the plainest English 
that you could desire, particularly the covenant of the league of 
nations. There is not a phrase of doubtful meaning in the whole 
document. 

And what is the meaning? It is that the covenant of the league 
of nations is a covenant of arbitration and discussion. Had anybody 
ever told you that before? I dare say that everybody you have 
heard talk about this discusses Article X. Well, there are 25 other 
articles in it, and all of them are about something else. They discuss 
how soon and how quick we can get out of it. Well, I am not a 
quitter for one. We can get out just so soon as we want to, but we 
do not want to get out as soon as we get in. And they talk about 
the Monroe doctrine, when it expressly says that nothing in that 
document shall be construed as affecting in any way the validity of 
the Monroe doctrine. It says so in so many words. And there are 
all the other things they talk about to draw your attention away 
from the essential matter. The essential matter, my fellow citizens. 
is this: This league will include all the fighting nations of the world, 
except Germany. The only nations that will not be admitted into 
it promptly are Germany and Turkey. All the fighting nations of 
the world are in it, and what do they promise? This is the center of 
the document. They promise that they never will go to war without 
first either submitting the question at issue to arbitration and absolutely 
abiding by the decision of the arbitrators, or, if they are not willing 
to submit it to arbitration, submitting it to discussion by the council 



ADDEESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 45 

of the league ; that they will give the council of the league six months 
in which to consider it, and that if they do not like the opinion of the 
council, they will wait three months after the opinion is rendered 
before going to war. And I tell you, my fellow citizens, that any 
nation that is in the wrong and waits nine months before it goes to 
war never will go to war. 

"Ah," but somebody says. " suppose they do not abide by that ? ' 
Because all the arguments you hear are based upon the assumption 
that we are all going to break the covenant, that bad faith is the ac- 
cepted rule. There has not been any such bad faith among nations 
in recent times except the flagrant bad faith of the nation we have just 
been fighting, and that bad faith is not likely to be repeated in the 
immediate future. Suppose somebody does not abide by those engage- 
ments, then what happens? War? Xo, not war. Something more 
terrible than war — absolute boycott of the nation violating the cove- 
nant. The doors are closed upon her. so that she can not ship any- 
thing out or receive anything in. She can not send a letter out or 
receive one in. Xo telegraphic message can cross her borders. Xo 
person can cross her borders. She is absolutely closed, and all the 
fighting nations of the world agree to join in the boycott. My own 
judgment is that war will not be necessary after that. If it is 
necessary, then it is perfectly evident that the case is one of a nation 
that wants to run amuck, and if any nation wants to run amuck in 
modern civilization, we must all see that the outlaw is captured. 

I was saying in one of the first speeches I made upon this little 
expedition of mine that I was very happy in the circumstance that 
there were no politics in this business. I meant no party politics, and 
I imritecl that audience, as I invite you. to forget all about parties. 
Forget that I am a Democrat. Forget that some of you are Repub- 
licans. Forget all about that. That has nothing to do with it. This 
afternoon a book I had forgotten all about, one of the campaign books 
of the last political campaign, was put in my hands, and I found in 
that book the platforms of the two parties. In both of those plat- 
forms they advocate just such an arrangement as the league of 
nations. When I was on the other side of the water I did not know 
that I was obeying orders from both parties, but I was. and I am very 
happy in that circumstance, because I can testify to you that I did not 
think anything about parties when I was on the other side of the 
water. I am just as much, my fellow citizens, in my present office 
the servant of my Republican fellow citizens as I am the servant of 
my Democratic fellow citizens. I am trying to be what some gentle- 
men do not know how to be. just a simple, plain-thinking, plain- 
speaking, out-and-out American. 

I want you to understand, my fellow citizens, that I did not leave 
Washington and come out on this trip because I doubted what was 



46 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

going to happen. I did not. For one thing, I wanted to have the 
pleasure of leaving Washington; and for another thing I wanted to 
have the very much greater pleasure of feeling the inspiration that I 
would get from you. Things get very lonely in Washington some- 
times. The real voices of the great people of America sometimes 
sound faint and distant in that strange city ! You hear politics until 
you wish that both parties were smothered in their own gas. I 
wanted to come out and hear some plain American, hear the kind of 
talk that I am accustomed to talk, the only kind of talk that I can 
understand, get the only kind of atmosphere with which I can fill 
my lungs wholesomely, and, then, incidentally, convey a hint in some 
quarters that the American people had not forgotten how to think. 

There are certain places where talk does not count for anything. 
I am inclined to think that one of those places is the fashionable 
dinner table. I have never heard so many things that were not so 
anywhere else. In the little circles of fashion and wealth informa- 
tion circulates the more freely the less true it is. For some reason 
there is a preference for the things that are incredible. I admit 
there is a certain intellectual excitement in believing the things that 
are incredible. It is very much duller to believe only the things that 
you know are so, but the spicy thing, the unusual thing, the thing 
that runs athwart the normal and wholesale currents of society is 
the thing that one can talk about with an unusual vocabulary and 
have a lot of fun in expounding. But such are not the things that 
make up the daily substance of thinking on the part of a wholesome 
nation like this. 

This Nation went into this war to see it through to the end, and 
the end has not come yet. This is the beginning, not of the Avar but 
of the processes which are going to render a war like this impossible. 
There are no other processes than those that are proposed in this 
great treaty. It is a great treaty, it is a treaty of justice, of rigorous 
and severe justice,'but do not forget that there are many other parties 
to this treaty than Germany and her opponents. There is rehabili- 
tated Poland. There is rescued Bohemia. There is redeemed Jugo- 
slavia. There is the rehabilitated Koumania. All the nations that 
Germany meant to crush and reduce to the status of tools in her own 
hands have been redeemed by this war and given the guarantee of 
the strongest nations of the world that nobody shall invade their 
liberty again. If you do not want to give them that guarantee, then 
you make it certain that without your guarantee the attempt will be 
made again, and if another war starts like this one, are you going to 
keep out of it ( If you keep out of this arrangement, that sort of war 
will come soon. If you go into it. it never will come. We are in the 
presence, therefore, of the most solemn choice that this people was 



ADDRESSES OE PRESIDENT WILSON. 47 

ever called upon to make. That choice is nothing less than this: 
Shall America redeem her pledges to the world? America is made 
up of the peoples of the world. All the best bloods of the world flow 
in her veins, all the old affections, all the old and sacred traditions 
of peoples of every sort throughout the wide world circulate in her 
veins, and she has said to mankind at her birth : " We have come to 
redeem the world by giving it liberty and justice." Now we are 
called upon before the tribunal of mankind to redeem that immortal 
pledge. ' 



*" 



ADDRESS AT CONVENTION HALL, KANSAS CITY, MO., 

SEPTEMBER 6, 1919. 



Mr. Chairman, my fellow countrymen, it is very inspiring to me 
to stand in the presence of so great a company of my fellow citizens 
and have the privilege of performing the duty that I have come to 
perform. That duty is to report to my fellow citizens concerning 
the work of the peace conference, and every day it seems to me to be- 
come more necessaiy to report, because so many people who are talk- 
ing about it do not understand what it was. 

I came back from Paris bringing one of the greatest documents of 
human history, and one of the things that made it great was that it 
was penetrated throughout with the principles to which America 
has devoted her life. Let me hasten to say that one of the most de- 
lightful circumstances of the work on the other side of the water 
was that I discovered that what we called American principles had 
penetrated to the heart and to the understanding, not only of the 
great peoples of Europe, but of the great men who were leading the 
peoples of Europe, and when these principles were written into this 
treaty, they were written there by common consent and common con- 
viction. But it remains true, nevertheless, my fellow citizens, that 
principles are written into that treaty which were never written into 
any great international understanding before, and that they had 
their natural birth and origin in this dear country to which we have 
devoted our life and service. 

I have no hesitation in saying that in spirit and essence it is an 
American document, and if you will bear with me — for this great 
subject is not a subject for oratory, it is a subject for examination 
and discussion — I will remind you of some of the things that we have 
long desired and which are at last accomplished in this treaty. I 
think that I can say that one of the things that America has had 
most at heart throughout her existence has been that there should be 
substituted for the brutal processes of war the friendly processes of 
consultation and arbitration, and that is done in the covenant of the 
league of nations. I am very anxious that my fellow citizens should 
realize that that is the chief topic of the covenant of the league of 
141677— S. Doc. 120. 66-1 4 49 



50 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

nations. The whole intent and purpose of the document is expressed 
in provisions by which all the member States agree that they will 
never go to Avar without first having done one or other of two things : 
Either submitted the matter in controversy to arbitration, in which 
case they agree to abide by the verdict, or submitted it to discussion 
in the council of the league of nations, in which case they consent to 
allow six months for the discussion and, whether they like the opin- 
ion expressed or not, that they will not go to war for three months 
after that opinion is expressed. So that you have, whether you get 
arbitration or not, nine months' discussion, and I want to remind you 
that that is the central principle of some 30 treaties entered into be- 
tween the United States of America and some 30 other sovereign na- 
tions, all of which were confirmed by the Senate of the United States. 
We have such an agreement with France. We have such an agree- 
ment with Great Britain. We have such an agreement with practi- 
cally every great nation except Germany, which refused to enter into 
any such arrangement, because, my fellow citizens, Germany knew 
that she intended something that did not bear discussion, and that if 
she had submitted the purpose which led to this war to so much as 
one month's discussion, she never would have dared go into the enter- 
prise against mankind which she finally did go into. Therefore, I 
, say that this principle of discussion is the principle already adopted 
by America. 

And what is the compulsion to do this? The compulsion is this, 
that if any member state violates that promise to submit either to 
arbitration or to discussion, it is thereby ipso facto deemed to have 
committed an act of war against all the rest. Then, you will ask, 
"Do we at once take up arms and fight them?" No, we do some- 
thing very much more terrible than that. We absolutely boycott 
them. It is provided in that instrument that there shall be no com- 
munication even between them and and the rest of the world. They 
shall receive no goods ; they shall ship no goods. They shall receive 
no telegraphic messages ; they shall send none. They shall receive no 
mail; no mail will be received from them. The nationals, the citi- 
zens, of the member states will never enter their territory until the 
matter is adjusted, and their citizens can not leave their territory. It 
is the most complete boycott ever conceived in a public document, and 
I Avant to say to you with confident prediction that there will be no 
more fighting after that. Gentlemen talk to you as if the most prob- 
able outcome of this great combination of all the fighting peoples of 
the world was going to be fight; whereas, as a matter of fact, the 
essence of the document is to the effect that the processes shall be 
peaceful, and peaceful processes are more deadly than the processes 
of war. Let any merchant put it to himself, that if he enters into a 
covenant and then breaks it and the people all around him absolutely 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 51 

desert his establishment and will have nothing to do with him — ask 
him after that if it will be necessary to send the police. The most 
terrible thing that can happen to an individual, and the most con- 
clusive thing that can happen to a nation, is to be read out of decent 
society. 

There was another thing that we wished to accomplish which is ac- 
complished in this document. We wanted disarmament, and this 
document provides in the only possible way for disarmament, by com- 
mon agreement. Observe, my fellow citizens, that, as I said just now, 
every great fighting nation in the world is to be a member of this 
partnership except Germany, and inasmuch as Germany has accepted 
a limitation of her army to 100,000 men, I do not think for the time 
being she may be regarded as a great fighting nation. Here in the 
center of Europe a great nation of more than 60,000,000 that has 
agreed not to maintain an army of more than 100,000 men, and all 
around her the rest of the world in concerted partnership to see that 
no other nation attempts what she attempted, and agreeing among 
themselves that they will not impose this limitation of armament 
upon Germany merely, but that they will impose it upon themselves. 

You know, my fellow citizens, what armaments mean : Great stand- 
ing armies and great stores of war material. They do not mean burden- 
some taxation merely, they do not mean merely compulsory military 
service which saps the economic strength of the nation, but they mean 
also the building up of a military class. Again and again, my fellow 
citizens, in the conference at Paris we were face to face with this cir- 
circumstance, that in dealing with a particular civil government we 
found that they would not dare to promise what their general staff 
was not willing that they should promise ; that they were dominated 
by the military machine which they had created, nominally for their 
own defense, but really, whether they willed it or not, for the provo- 
cation of war. So soon as you have a military class, it does not make 
any difference what your form of government is, if you are deter- 
mined to be armed to the teeth, you must obey the orders and direc- 
tions of the only men who can control the great machinery of war. 
Elections are of minor importance, because they determine the 
political policy, and back of that political policy is the constant pres- 
sure of the men trained to arms, enormous bodies of disciplined 
men, wondering if they are never going to be allowed to use their 
education and their skill and ravage some great people with the force 
of arms. That is the- meaning of armaments. It is not merely the 
cost of it, though that is overwhelming, but it is the spirit of it, and 
America has never and I hope, in the providence of God, never will 
have, that spirit. There is no other way to dispense with great 
armaments except by the common agreement of the fighting nations 



52 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

of the world. And here is the agreement. They promise disarma- 
ment, and promise to agree upon a plan. 

There was something else we wanted that is accomplished by this 
treaty. We wanted to destroy autocratic authority everywhere in 
the world. We wanted to see to it that there was no place in the world 
where a small group of men could use their fellow citizens as pawns 
in a game ; that there was no place in the world where a small group 
vof men, without consulting their fellow citizens, could send their 
fellow citizens to the battle fields and to death in order to accom- 
plish some dynastic ambition, some political plan that had been con- 
ceived in private, some object that had been prepared for by uni- 
versal, world-wide, intrigue. That is what we wanted to accomplish. 
The most startling thing that developed itself at the opening of our 
participation in this war was, not the military preparation of Ger- 
many — we were familiar with that, though we had been dreaming 
that she would not use it — but her political preparation — to find 
every community in the civilized world was penetrated by her in- 
trigue. The German people did not know that, but it was known on 
Wilhelmstrasse, where the central offices of the German Government 
were, and Wilhelmstrasse was the master of the German people. 
And this war, my fellow citizens, has emancipated the German 
people as well as the rest of the world. We do not want to see any- 
thing like that happen again, because we know that democracies will 
sooner or later have to destroy that form of Government, and if we 
do not destroy it now the job is still to be done. And by a combina- 
tion of all the great fighting peoples of the world, to see to it that the 
aggressive purposes of such governments can not be realized, 3-011 
make it no longer worth while for little groups of men to contrive 
the downfall of civilization in private conference. 

I want to say something about that that has a different aspect, and 
perhaps you will regard it as a slight digression from the discussion 
which I am asking you to be patient enough to follow. My fellow 
citizens, it does not make any difference what kind of a minority 
governs you if it is a minorit3 r , and the thing Ave must see to is that no 
minority anywhere masters the majority. That is at the heart, my 
fellow citizens, of the tragical things that are happening in that great 
country which we long to help and can find no way that is effective 
to help. I mean the great realm of Kussia. The men who are now 
measurably in control of the affairs of Russia represent nobody but 
themselves. They have again and again been challenged to call a 
constitutional convention. They have again and again been chal- 
lenged to prove that they had some kind of a mandate, even from a 
single class of their fellow citizens, and they dare not attempt it. 
They have no mandate from aivybocty. There are 011I3 7 31 of them, 
I am told, and there were more than M men who used to control the 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 53 

destinies of Europe from Wilhelmstrasse. There is a closer monopoly 
of power in Petrograd and Moscow than there ever was in Berlin, 
and the thing that is intolerable is, not that the Russian people are 
having their way, but that another group of men more cruel than the 
Czar himself is controlling the destinies of that great people. 

I want to say here and now that I am against the control of any 
minority anywhere. Search your own economic history and what 
have you been uneasy about? Now and again you have said there 
were small groups of capitalists who were controlling the industry 
and therefore the development of the United States. Very well, my 
fellow citizens ; if that is so, and sometimes I have feared that it was, 
we must break up that monopoly. I am not now saying that there is 
any group of our fellow citizens who are consciously doing anything: 
of the kind. I am saying that these allegations must be proved, but 
if it is proved that any class, any group, anywhere, is, without the 
suffrage of their fellow citizens, in control of our affairs, then I am 
with you to destroy the power of that group. We have got to be 
frank with ourselves, however : If we do not want minority govern- 
ment in Russia, we must see that we do not have it in the United 
States. If you do not want little groups of selfish men to plot the 
future of Europe, we must not allow little groups of selfish men to 
plot the future of America. Any man that speaks for a class must 
prove that he also speaks for all his fellow citizens and for mankind, 
and then we will listen to him. The most difficult thing in a 
democracy, my fellow citizens, is to get classes, where they unfortun- 
ately exist, to understand one another and unite, and you have not 
got a great democracy until they do understand one another and 
unite. If we are in for seeing that there are no more Czars and no 
more Kaisers, then let us do a thorough job and see that nothing 
of that sort occurs anywhere. 

Then there was another thing we wanted to do, my fellow citizens, 
that is done in this document. We wanted to see that helpless peoples 
were nowhere in the world put at the mercy of unscrupulous enemies 
and masters. There is one pitiful example which is in the hearts of 
all of us. I mean the example of Armenia. There a Christian 
people is helpless, at the mercy of a Turkish government which 
thought it the service of God to destroy them; and at this moment, 
my fellow citizens, it is an open question whether the Armenian 
people will not, while we sit here and debate, be absolutely destroyed. 
When I think of words piled on words, of debate following debate^ 
while these unspeakable things that can not be handled until the 
debate is over are happening in this pitiful part of the world, I 
wonder that men do not wake up to the moral responsibility of what 
they are doing. Great populations are driven out upon a desert where 
there is no food and can be none and there compelled to die, and the 



54 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WDLSON. 

men and women and children thrown into a common grave, so im- 
perfectly covered up that here and there is a pitiful arm stretched 
out to heaven and there is no pity in the world. When shall we wake 
to the moral responsibility of this great occasion ? 

There are other aspects to that matter. Not all the populations 
that are having something that is not a square deal live in Armenia. 
There are others, and one of the glories of the great document which 
I brought back with me is this, that everywhere within the area of 
settlement covered by the political questions involved in that treaty 
people of that sort have been given their freedom and guaranteed 
their freedom. But the thing does not end there, because the treaty 
includes the covenant of the league of nations, and what does that 
say? That says that is the privilege of any member state to call 
attention to anything, anywhere, that is likely to disturb the peace 
of the world or the good understanding between nations upon which 
the peace of the world depends, and every people in the world that 
has not got what it thinks it ought to have is thereby given a world 
forum in which to bring the thing to the bar of mankind. An in- 
comparable thing, a thing that never was dreamed of before ! A 
thing that was never conceived as possible before, that it should not 
be regarded as an unfriendly act on the part of the representatives 
of one nation to call attention to something being done within the 
confines of another empire which was disturbing the peace of the 
world and the good understanding between nations. There never 
before has been provided a world forum in which the legitimate 
grievances of peoples entitled to consideration can be brought to the 
common judgment of mankind, and if I were the advocate of any 
suppressed or oppressed people, I surely could not ask an} T better 
forum than to stand up before the world and challenge the other 
party to make good its excuses for not acting in that case. That 
compulsion is the most tremendous moral compulsion that could be 
devised by organized mankind. 

I think I can take it for granted, my fellow citizens, that you never 
realized before what a scope this great treaty has. You have been 
asked to look at so many little spots in it with a magnifying glass that 
vou did not know how big it is, what a great enterprise of the human 
spirit it is, and what a thoroughly American document it is from cover 
to cover. It is the first great international agreement in the history 
of mankind where the principle adopted has been, not the power of 
the strong but the right of the weak. To reject that treaty, to alter 
that treaty, is to impair one of the first charters of mankind. Yet 
there are men who approach the question with passion, with private 
passion, with party passion, who think only of some immediate ad- 
vantage to themselves or to a group of their fellow countrymen, and 
who lock at the thing with the jaundice eyes of those who have some 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 55 

private purpose of their own. When at last in the annals of mankind 
they are gibbeted, they will regret that the gibbet is so high. 

I would not have }^ou think that I am trying to characterize those 
who conscientiously object to anything in this great document. I take 
off my hat to any man's genuine conscience, and there are men who are 
conscientiously opposed, though they will pardon me if I say igno- 
rantly opposed. I have no quarrel with them. It has been a pleasure 
to confer with some of them and to tell them as frankly as I wou ] d 
have told my most intimate friend the whole inside of my mind and 
of every other mind that I kneAv anything about that had been con- 
cerned with the conduct of affairs at Paris, in order that they might 
understand this thing and go with the rest of us in the confirmation 
of what is necessary for the peace of the world. I have no intolerant 
spirit in the matter, I assure you, but I also assure you that from the 
bottom of my feet to the top of my head I have got a fighting spirit 
about it. If anybody dares to defeat this great experiment, then they 
must gather together the counsellors of the world and do something 
better. If there is a better scheme, I for one will subscribe to it, but 
I want to say now, as I said, the other night, it is a case of " put up or 
shut up." Negation will not serve the world. Opposition constructs 
nothing. Opposition is the specialty of those who are Bolshevistically 
inclined — and again I assure you I am not comparing any of my re- 
spected colleagues to Bolshevists; I am merely pointing out that the 
Bolshevist spirit lacks every element of constructiveness. They have 
destroyed everything and they propose nothing, and while there is a 
common abhorrence for political Bolshevism, I hope there will not be 
such a thing growing up in our country as international Bolshevism, 
the Bolshevism which destroys the constructive work of men who 
have conscientiously tried to cement the good feeling of the great 
peoples of the world. 

The majestic thing about the league of nations is that it is to in- 
clude the great peoples of the world, all except Germany. Germany 
is one of the great peoples of the world. I would be ashamed not to 
say that. Those 60,000,000 industrious and inventive and accom- 
plished people are one of the great peoples of the world. They have 
been put upon. They have been misled. Their minds have been de- 
based by a false philosophy. They have been taught things that the 
human spirit ought to reject, but they will come out of that night- 
mare, they will come out of that phantasm, and they will again be 
a great people. And when they are out of it, when they have got over 
that dream of conquest and of oppression, when they have shown 
that their Government really is based upon new principles and upon 
democratic principles, then we, all of us at Paris agreed that they 
should be admitted to the league of nations. In the meantime, her 



56 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

one-time partner, Austria, is to be admitted. Hungary, I dare, *" 3a y* 
will be admitted. The only nations of any consequence outsit ^he 
league — unless we choose to stay out and go in later with. Germ an J • 
are Germany and Turkey, and we are just now looking for the P lec ^s 
of Turkey. She has so thoroughly disintegrated that the proc^^of 
assembling the parts is becoming increasingly difficult, and the chief 
controversy now is who shall attempt that very difficult and perilous 
job? 

Is it not a great vision, my fellow citizens, this of the thoughtful 
world combined for peace, this of all the great peoples of the world 
associated to see that justice is done, that the strong who intend 
wrong are restrained and that the weak who can not defend them- 
selves are made secure ? We have a problem ahead of us that ought 
to interest us in this connection. We have promised the people of 
the Philippine Islands that we will set them free, and it has been one 
of our perplexities how we should make them safe after we set them 
free. Under this arrangement it will be safe from the outset. They 
will become members of the league of nations, every great nation in 
the world will be pledged to respect and preserve against external 
aggression from any quarter the territorial integrity and political 
independence of the Philippines. It simplifies one of the most per- 
plexing problems that has faced the American public, but it does not 
simplify our problems merel} 7 , gentlemen. It illustrates the triumph 
of the American spirit. I do not want to attempt any flight of fancy, 
but I can fancy those men of the first generation that so thoughtfully 
set this great Government up, the generation of Washington and 
Hamilton and Jefferson and the Adamses — I can fancy their looking 
on with a sort of enraptured amazement that the American spirit 
should have made conquest of the world. 

I wish you could have seen the faces of some of the people that talked 
to us over there about the arrival of the American troops. At first 
they did not know that we were going to be able to send so many,, 
but they got something from the first groups that changed the whole 
aspect of the war. One of the most influential ladies in Paris, the 
wife of a member of the cabinet, told us that on the Fourth of July 
of last year she and others had attended the ceremonies with very 
sad hearts and merely out of courtesy to the United States, because 
they did not believe that the aid of the United States was going to 
be effective, but she said, " After Ave had been there and seen the faces 
of those men in khaki, seen the spirit of their swing and attitude 
and seen the vision that was in their eyes, we came away knowing 
that victory was in sight.*' What Europe saw in our boys was not 
merely men under arms, indomitable men under arms, but men with 
an ideal in their eyes, men who had come a long way from home to 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 57 

defend other peoples, men who had forgotten the convenience of 
everything that personally affected them and had turned away from 
the longing love of the people who were dear to them and gone across 
the broad sea to rescue the nations of the world from an intolerable 
oppression. 

I tell you, my fellow citizens, the war was won by the American 
spirit. German orders were picked up on the battle field directing 
the commanders not to let the Americans get hold of a particular 
post, because you never could get them out again. You know what 
one of our American wits said, that it took only half as long to train 
an American arnry as an} T other, because you had only to train them 
to go one way. It is true that they never thought of going any other 
way, and when they were restrained, because they were told it was 
premature or dangerous, they were impatient, they said, " We didn't 
come over here to wait, we came over here to fight," and their very au- 
dacity, their very indifference to danger, changed the morale of the 
battle field. They were not fighting prudently ; they were going to get 
there. And America in this treaty has realized, my fellow countrymen, 
what those gallant boys we are so proud of fought for. The men who 
make this impossible or difficult will have a life-long reckoning with 
the fighting forces of the United States. I have consorted with those 
boys. I have been proud to call myself their Commander in Chief. 
I did not run the business. They did not need anybody to run it. 
All I had to do was to turn them loose ! 

And now for a final word, my fellow citizens. If anything that I 
have said has left the impression on your mind that I have the least 
doubt of the result, please dismiss the impression. And if you think 
that I have come out on this errand to fight anybody — any body — 
please dismiss that from your mind. I have not come to fight or 
antagonize anybody, or any body of individuals. I have, let me say 
without the slightest affectation, the greatest respect for the Senate 
of the United States, but, my fellow citizens, I have come out to fight 
a cause. That cause is greater than the Senate. It is greater than 
the Government. It is as great as the cause of mankind, and I intend, 
in office or out, to fight that battle as long as I live. My ancestors 
were troublesome Scotchmen, and among them were some of that 
famous group that were known as the Covenanters. Very well, then, 
here is the covenant of the league of nations. I am a Covenanter ! 



ADDRESS AT DES MOINES, IOWA, 

SEPTEMBER 6, 1919. 



Mr. Chairman and fellow countrymen, you make my heart very 
warm with your generous welcome, and I want to express my 
unaffected gratitude to your chairman for having so truly struck the 
note of an occasion like this. He has used almost the very words that 
were in my thought, that the world is inflamed and profoundly dis- 
turbed, and we are met to discuss the measures by which its spirit can 
be quieted and its affairs turned to the right courses of human life. 
My fellow countrymen, the world is desperately in need of the settled 
conditions of peace, and it can not wait much longer. It is waiting 
upon us. That is the thought, that is the burdensome thought, upon 
my heart to-night, that the world is waiting for the verdict of the 
Nation to which it looked for leadership and which it thought would 
be the last that would ask the world to wait. 

My fellow citizens, the world is not at peace. I suppose that it is 
difficult for one who has not had some touch of the hot passion of the 
other side of the sea to realize how all the passions that have been 
slumbering for ages have been uncovered and released by the tragedy 
of this war. We speak of the tragedy of this war, but the tragedy 
that lay back of it was greater than the war itself, because back of it 
lay long ages in which the legitimate freedom of men was sup- 
pressed. Back of it lay long ages of recurrent war in which little 
groups of men, closeted in capitals, determined whether the sons of the 
land over which they ruled should go out upon the field and shed their 
blood. For what? For liberty? No; not for liberty, but for the 
aggrandizement of those who ruled them. And this had been slumber- 
ing in the hearts of men. They had felt the suppression of it. They 
had felt the mastery of those whom they had not chosen as their 
masters. They had felt the oppression of laws which did not admit 
them to the equal exercise of human rights. Now, all of this is released 
and uncovered and men glare at one another and say, "Now we are 
free and what shall we do with our freedom?" 

What happened in Russia was not a sudden and accidental thing. 
The people of Russia were maddened with the suppression of Czarism. 

59 



60 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

When at last the chance came to throw off those chains, they threw 
them off, at first with hearts full of confidence and hope, and then they 
found out that they had been again deceived. There was no assembly 
chosen to frame a constitution for them, or, rather, there was an 
assembly chosen to choose a constitution for them and it was sup- 
pressed and dispersed, and a little group of men just as selfish, just 
as ruthless, just as pitiless, as the agents of the Czar himself, assumed 
control and exercised their power by terror and not by right. And 
in other parts of Europe the poison spread — the poison of disorder, 
the poison of revolt, the poison of chaos. And do you honestly think, 
my fellow citizens, that none of that poison has got in the veins of 
this free people? Do you not know that the world is all now one 
single whispering gallery ? Those antenna? of the wireless telegraph 
are the symbols of our age. All the impulses of mankind are thrown 
out upon the air and reach to the ends of the earth; quietly upon 
steamships, silently under the cover of the Postal Service, with the 
tongue of the wireless and the tongue of the telegraph, all the sug- 
gestions of disorder are spread through the world. Money coming 
from nobody knows where is deposited by the millions in capitals like 
Stockholm, to be used for the propaganda of disorder and discontent 
and dissolution throughout the world, and men look you calmly in 
the face in America and say they are for that sort of revolution, when 
that sort of revolution means government by terror, government by 
force, not government by vote. It is the negation of everything that 
is American; but it is spreading, and so long as disorder continues, 
so long as the world is kept waiting for the answer to the question, 
What kind of peace are we going to have and what kind of guaranties 
are there to be behind that peace? that poison will steadily spread 
more and more rapidly, spread until it may be that even this beloved 
land of ours will be distracted and distorted by it. 

That is what is concerning me, my fellow countrymen. I know the 
splendid steadiness of the American people, but, my fellow citizens, 
the whole world needs that steadiness, and the American people are 
the makeweight in the fortunes of mankind. How long are we going 
to debate into which scale we will throw that magnificent equipoise 
that belongs to us ? Hoay long shall we be kept waiting for the answer 
whether the world may trust us or despise us? They have looked to 
us for leadership. They have looked to us for example. They have 
built their peace upon the basis of our suggestions, ^phat g^eat 
volume that contains the treaty of peace is drawn along flie specifica- 
tions laid down by the American Government, and now the world 
stands at amaze because an authority in America hesitates whether 
it will indorse an American document or not. 

You know what the necessity of peace is. Political liberty can 
exist only when there is peace. Social reform can take place only 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 61 

when there is peace. The settlement of every question that concerns 
our daily life waits for peace. I have been receiving delegations in 
Washington of men engaged in the service of the Government tem- 
porarily in the administration of the railways, and I have had to say 
to them, " My friends, I can not tell what the railways can earn until 
commerce is restored to its normal courses. Until I can tell what the 
railroads can earn I can not tell what the wages that the railroads 
can pay will be. I can not suggest what the increase of freight and 
passenger rates will be to meet these increases in wages if the rates 
must be increased. I can not tell yet whether it will be necessary to 
increase the rates or not, and I must ask you to wait." But they are 
not the only people that have come to see me. There are all sorts of 
adjustments necessary in this country. I have asked representatives 
of capital and labor to come to Washington next month and confer — 
confer about the fundamental thing of our life at present ; that is to 
say, the conditions of labor. Do you realize, my fellow citizens, that 
all through the world the one central question of civilization is, 
" What shall be the conditions of labor ? " The profound unrest in 
Europe is due to the doubt prevailing as to what shall be the condi- 
tions of labor, and I need not tell you that that unrest is spreading to 
America. 

In the midst of the treaty of peace is a Magna Charta, a great 
guaranty for labor. It provides that labor shall have the counsels 
of the world devoted to the discussion of its conditions and of its 
betterment, and labor all over the world is waiting to know whether 
America is going to take part in those conferences or not. The con- 
fidence of the men who sat at Paris was such that they put it in the 
document that the first meeting of the labor conference under that 
part of the treaty should take place in Washington upon the invita- 
tion of the President of the United States. I am going to issue that 
invitation, whether we can attend the conference or not. But think 
of the mortification ! Think of standing by in Washington itself and 
seeing the world take counsel upon the fundamental matter of civili- 
zation without us. The thing is inconceivable, but it is true. The 
world is waiting, waiting to see, not whether we will take part but 
whether we will serve and lead, for it has expected us to lead. I want 
to testify that the most touching and thrilling thing that has ever 
happened to me was what happened almost every day when I was in 
Paris. Delegations from all over the world came to me to solicit the 
friendship of America. They frankly told us that they were not 
sure they could trust anybody else, but that they did absolutely trust 
us to do them justice and to see that justice was done them. Why, 
some of them came from countries which I have, to my shame, to 
admit tfrat I never heard of before, and I had to ask as privately as 
possible what language they spoke. Fortunately they always had an 



62 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

interpreter, but I alwaj^s wanted to know at least what family of 
languages they were speaking. The touching thing was that from 
the ends of the earth, from little pocketed valleys, where I did not 
know that a separate people lived, there came men — men of dignity, 
men of intellectual parts, men entertaining in their thought and in 
their memories a great tradition, some of the oldest people of the 
world — and they came and sat at the feet of the youngest nation of 
the world and said, " Teach us the way to liberty." 

That is the attitude of the world, and reflect, my fellow country- 
men, upon the reaction, the reaction of despair, that would come if 
America said, " We do not want to lead you. You must do without 
our advice. You must shift without us." Now, are we going to 
bring about a peace, for which everything waits ? We can not bring 
it about by doing nothing. I have been very much amazed and very 
much amused, if I could be amused in such critical circumstances, to 
see that the statesmanship of some gentlemen consists in the very 
interesting proposition that we do nothing at all. I had heard of 
standing pat before, but I never had before heard of standpatism 
going to the length of saying it is none of our business and we do not 
care what happens to the rest of the world. 

Your chairman made a profoundly true remark just now. The iso- 
lation of the United States is at an end, not because we chose to go 
into the politics of the world, but because b}^ the sheer genius of this 
people and the growth of our power we have become a determining 
factor in the history of mankind, and after you had become a deter- 
mining factor you can not remain isolated, whether you want to or not. 
Isolation ended by the processes of histor}^, not by the processes of 
our independent choice, and the processes of history merely fulfilled 
the prediction of the men who founded our Republic. Go back and 
read some of the immortal sentences of the men that assisted to frame 
this Government and see how they set up a standard to which they in- 
tended that the nations of the world should rally. They said to the 
people of the world, "Come to us; this is the home of liberty; this is 
the place where mankind can learn how to govern their own affairs 
and straighten out their own difficulties," and the world did come to 
us. 

Look at your neighbor. Look at the statistics of the people of your 
State. Look at the statistics of the people of the United States. 
They have come, their hearts full of hope and confidence, from prac- 
tically every nation in the world, to constitute a portion of our 
strength and of our hope and a contribution to our achievement. 
Sometimes I feel like taking off my hat to some of those immigrants. 
I was born an American. I could not help it, but they chose to be 
Americans. They were not born Americans. They saw this star in 
the west rising over the peoples of the world, and they said, "That is 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 63 

the star of hope and the star of salvation. We will set our footsteps 
toward the west and join that great body of men whom God has 
blessed with the vision of liberty." I honor those men. I say, " You 
made a deliberate choice which showed that you saw what the drift 
and history of mankind was." I am very grateful, I may say in 
parentheses, that I did not have to make that choice. I am grateful 
that ever since I can remember I have breathed this blessed air of 
freedom. I am grateful that every instinct in me, every drop of 
blood in me remembers and stands up and shouts at the traditions of 
the United States. But some gentlemen are not shouting now about 
that. They are saying, " Yes ; we made a great promise to mankind, 
but it will cost too much to redeem it." My fellow citizens, that is 
not the spirit of America, and you can not have peace, you can not 
have even your legitimate part in the business of the world unless you 
are partners with the rest. If you are going to say to the world, 
" We will stand off and see what we can get out of this," the world 
will see to it that you do not get anything out of it. If it is your 
deliberate choice that instead of being friends you will be rivals and 
antagonists, then you will get exactly what rivals and antagonists 
always get, just as little as can be grudgingly vouchsafed you. 

Yet you must keep the world on its feet. Is there any business 
. man here who would be willing to see the world go bankrupt and the 
business of the world stop? Is there any man here who does not 
know that America is the only nation left by the war in a position to 
see that the w oriel does go on with its business? ^And is it your 
idea that if we lend our money, as we must, to men whom we have 
bitterly disappointed, that money will bring back to us the largess 
to which we are entitled? I do not like to argue this thing on this 
basis, but if you want to talk business, I am ready to talk business. 
If it is a matter of how much you are going to get from your 
money, I say you ay ill not get half as much as antagonists as you 
will get as partners. Think that over, if you have none of that 
thing that is so lightly spoken of, known as altruism. And, be- 
lieve me, my fellow countrymen, the only people in the world who are 
going to reap the harvest of the future are the people who can enter- 
tain ideals, who can follow ideals to the death. 

I was saying to another audience to-day that one of the most beauti- 
ful stories I know is the story that we heard in France about the first 
effect of the American soldiers Avhen they got over there. The 
French did not believe at first, the British did not believe, that we 
could finally get 2,000,000 men over there. The most that they hoped 
at first was that a few American soldiers would restore their morale, 
for let me say that their morale was gone. The beautiful story to 
which I referred is this, the testimony that all of them rendered that 



64 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

they got their morale back the minute they saw the eyes of those boys. 
Here were not only soldiers. There was no curtain in front of the 
retina of those eyes. They were American eyes. They were eyes 
that had seen visions. They were eyes the possessors of which had 
brought with them a great ardor for a supreme cause, and the reason 
those boys never stopped was that their eyes were lifted to the hori- 
zon. They saw a city not built with hands. They saw a citadel 
toward which their steps were bent where dwelt the oracles of God 
himself. And on the battle field were found German orders to com- 
manders here and there to see to it that the Americans did not get 
lodgment in particular places, because if they ever did you never 
could get them out. They had gone to Europe to go the whole way 
toward the realization of the teaching which their fathers had handed 
down to them. There never were crusaders that went to the Holy 
Land in the old ages that we read about that were more truly devoted 
to a holy cause than these gallant, incomparable sons of America. 

My fellow citizens, you have got to make up your minds, because, 
after all, it is you who are going to make up the minds of this coun- 
try. I do not owe a report or the slightest responsibility to anybody 
but you. I do not mean only you in this hall, though I am free to 
admit that this is just as good a sample of America as you can find 
anywhere, and the sample looks mighty good to me. I mean you and 
the millions besides you, thoughtful, responsible American men and 
women all over this country. They are my bosses ? and I am mighty 
glad to be their servant. I have come out upon this journey not to 
fight anybody but to report to you, and I am free to predict that if 
you credit the report there will be no fighting. It is not only neces- 
sary that we should make peace with Germany and make peace with 
Austria, and see that a reasonable peace is made with Turkey and 
Bulgaria — that is not only not all of it, but it is a very dangerous 
beginning if you do not add something to it. I said just now that the 
peace with Germany, and the same is true of the pending peace 
with Austria, was made upon American specifications, not un- 
willingly. Do not let me leave the impression on your mind that 
the representatives of America in Paris had to insist and force their 
principles upon the rest. That is not true. Those principles were 
accepted before we got over there, and the men I dealt with carried 
them out in absolute good faith ; but they were our principles, and at 
the heart of them lay this, that there must be a free Poland, for 
example. 

I wonder if you realize what that means. We had to collect the 
pieces of Poland. For a long time one piece had belonged to Russia, 
and we can not get a clear title to that yet. Another part belonged 
to Austria. We got a title to that. Another part belonged to Ger- 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WTLSON. 65 

many, and we have settled the title to that. But we found Germany 
also in possession of other pieces of territory occupied predominately 
or exclusively by patriotic Poles, and we said to Germany, " You will 
have to give that up, too ; that belongs to Poland." Not because it is 
ground, but because those people there are Poles and want to be parts 
of Poland, and it is not our business to force any sovereignty upon 
anybody who does not want to live under it. When we had deter- 
mined the boundaries of Poland we set it up and recognized it as an 
independent Republic. There is a minister, a diplomatic representa- 
tive, of the United States at Warsaw right now in virtue of our for- 
mal recognition of the Republic of Poland. 

But upon Poland center some of the dangers of the future. South 
of Poland is Bohemia, which we cut away from the Austrian combi- 
nation. Below Bohemia is Hungary, which can no longer rely upon 
the assistant strength of Austria, and below her is an enlarged Rou- 
mania. Alongside of Roumania is the new Slavic Kingdom, that 
never could have won its own independence, which had chafed under 
the chains of Austria-Hungary, but never could throw them off. We 
have said, " The fundamental wrongs of history center in these re- 
gions. These people have the right to govern their own Government 
and control their own fortunes." That is at the heart of the treaty, 
but, my fellow citizens, this is at the heart of the future : The business 
men of Germany did not want the war that we have passed through. 
The bankers and the manufacturers and the merchants knew that it 
was unspeakable folly. Why? Because Germany by her industrial 
genius was beginning to dominate the world economically, and all she 
had to do was to wait for about two more generations when her credit, 
her merchandise, her enterprise, would have covered all the parts of 
the world that the great fighting nations did not control. The for- 
mula of pan-Germanism, you remember, was Bremen to Bagdad — 
Bremen on the North Sea to Bagdad in Persia. These countries that 
we have set up as the new home of liberty lie right along that road. If 
we leave them there without the guaranty that the combined force of 
the world will assure their independence and their territorial integ- 
rity, we have only to wait a short generation when our recent experi- 
ence will be repeated. We did not let Germany dominate the world 
this time. Are we then? If Germany had known then that all the 
other fighting nations of the world would combine to prevent her 
action, she never would have dreamed of attempting it. If Germany 
had known — this is the common verdict of every man familiar with 
the politics of Europe — if Germany had known that England would 
go in, she never would have started it. If she had known that America 
would come in, she never would have dreamed of it. And now the 
only way to make it certain that there never will be another world war 

141677— S. Doc. 120, 66-1 5 



66 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

like that is that we should assist in guaranteeing the peace and its 
settlement. 

It is a very interesting circumstance, my fellow countrymen, that 
the league of nations will contain all the nations of the world, great 
and small, except Germany, and Germany is merely put on probation. 
We have practically said to Germany, " If it turns out that you really 
have had a change of heart and have gotten nonsense out of your sys- 
tem; if it really does turn out that you have substituted a genuine 
self-governing Republic for a Kingdom where a few men on Wilhelm- 
strasse plotted the destiny of the world, then we will let you in as 
partners, because then you will be respectable." In the meantime, 
accepting the treaty, Germany's army is reduced to 100,000 men, and 
she has promised to give up all the war material over and above what 
is necessary for 100,000 men. For a nation of 60,000,000 ! She has 
surrendered to the world. She has said, " Our fate is in your hands. 
We are ready to do what you tell us to do." The rest of the world is 
combined, and the interesting circumstance is that the rest of the 
world, excluding us, will continue combined if we do not go into it. 
Some gentlemen seem to think they can break up this treat}^ and pre- 
vent this league by not going into it. Not at all. 

I can give you an interesting circumstance. There is the settle- 
ment, which you have heard so much discussed, about that rich and 
ancient Province of Shantung in China. I do not like that settle- 
ment any better than you do, but these were the circumstances: In 
order to induce Japan to cooperate in the war and clear the Pacific of 
the German power England, and subsequently France, bound them-, 
selves without any qualification to see to it that Japan got anything 
in China that Germany had, and that Japan would take it away from 
her, upon the strength of which promise Japan proceeded to take 
Kiaochow and occupy the portions of Shantung Province, which had 
been ceded by China for a term of years to Germany. The most that 
could be got out of it was that, in view of the fact that America had 
nothing to do with it, the Japanese were ready to promise that they 
would give up every item of sovereignty which Germany would other- 
wise have enjoyed in Shantung Province and return it without re- 
striction to China, and that they would retain in the Province only 
the economic concessions such as other nations already had elsewhere 
in China — though you do not hear anything about that — concessions 
in the railway and the mines which had become attached to the rail- 
way for operative purposes. But suppose that you say that is not 
enough. Very well, then, stay out of the treaty, and how will that 
accomplish anything? England and France are bound and can not 
escape their obligation. Are you going to institute a war against 
Japan and France and England to get Shantung back for China? 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 67 

That is an enterprise which does not commend itself to the present 
generation. 

I am putting it in brutal terms, my fellow citizens, but that is the 
fact. By disagreeing to that provision, we accomplish nothing for 
China. On the contrary, we stay out of the only combination of the 
counsels of nations in which we can be of service to China. With 
China as a member of the league of nations, and Japan as a member 
of the league of nations, and America as a member of the league of 
nations, there confronts every one of them that now famous article 
10, by which every member of the league agrees to respect and preserve 
the territorial integrity and existing political independence of all the 
other member States. Do not let anybody persuade you that you 
can take that article out and have a peaceful world. That cuts at 
the root of the German war. That cuts at the root of the outrage 
against Belgium. That cuts at the root of the outrage against France. 
That pulls that vile, unwholesome Upas tree of Pan Germanism up by 
the roots, and it pulls all other "pans " up, too. Every land-grabbing 
nation is served notice, " Keep on your own territory. Mind your own 
business. That territory belongs to those people and the} 7 can do with 
it what they please, provided they do not invade other people's rights 
by the use they make of it." My fellow citizens, the thing is going 
to be done whether we are in it or not. If we are in it, then we are 
going to be the determining factor in the development of civilization. 
If we are out of it, we ourselves are going to watch every other 
nation with suspicion, and we will be justified, too; and we are going 
to be watched with suspicion. Every movement of trade, every rela- 
tionship of manufacture, every question of raw materials, every mat- 
ter that affects the intercourse of the world, will be impeded by the 
consciousness that America wants to hold off and get something which 
she is not willing to share with the rest of mankind. I am painting 
the picture for you, because I know that it is as intolerable to you as 
it is to me. But do not go away with the impression, I beg you, that 
I think there is any doubt about the issue. The only thing that can 
be accomplished is delay. The ultimate outcome will be the trium- 
phant acceptance of the treaty and the league. 

Let me pay the tribute which it is only just that I should pay to 
some of the men who have been, I believe, misunderstood in this busi- 
ness. It is only a handful of men, my fellow citizens, who are trying 
to defeat the treaty or to prevent the league. The great majority, in 
official bodies and out, are scrutinizing it, as it is perfectly legitimate 
that they should scrutinize it, to see if it is necessary that they should 
qualify it in any way, and my knowledge of their conscience, my 
knowledge of their public principle, makes me certain that they will 
sooner or later see that it is safest, since it is all expressed in the plain- 



68 ADDEESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

est English that the English dictionary affords, not to qualify it— to 
accept it as it is. I have been a student of the English language all 
my life and I do not see a single obscure sentence in the whole docu- 
ment. Some gentlemen either have not read it or do not understand 
the English language ; but, fortunately, on the right-hand page it is 
printed in English and on the left-hand page it is printed in French. 
Now, if they do not understand English, I hope they will get a French 
dictionary and dig out the meaning on that side. The French is a 
very precise language, more precise than the English language, I am 
told. I am not on a speaking acquaintance with it, but I am told that 
it is the most precise language in Europe, and that any given phrase 
in French always means the same thing. That can not be said of 
English. In order to satisfy themselves, I hope these gentlemen will 
master the French version and then be reassured that there are no 
lurking monsters in that document; that there are no sinister pur- 
poses ; that everything is said in the frankest way. 

For example, they have been very much worried at the phrase 
that nothing in the document shall be taken as impairing in any way 
the validity of such regional understandings as the Monroe doctrine. 
They say, " Why put in ' such regional understandings as ' ? What 
other understandings are there? Have you got something up your 
sleeve? Is there going to be a Monroe doctrine in Asia? Is there 
going to be a Monroe doctrine in China ? " Why, my fellow citizens, 
the phrase was writen in perfect innocence. The men that I was 
associated with said, " It is not wise to put a specific thing that be- 
longs only to one nation in a document like this. We do not know 
of any other regional understanding like it; we never heard of any 
other; we never expect to hear of any other, but there might some 
day be some other, and so we will say ' such regional understandings 
as the Monroe doctrine,' " and their phrase was intended to give 
right of way to the Monroe doctrine in the Western Hemisphere. 
I reminded the Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate the 
other day that the conference I held with them was not the first con- 
ference I had held about the league of nations. When I came back 
to this our own dear country in March last I held a conference at 
the White House with the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 
and the} 7 made various suggestions as to how the covenant should 
be altered in phraseology. I carried those suggestions back to Paris, 
and every one of them was accepted. I think that is a sufficient 
guaranty that no mischief was intended. The whole document is 
of the same plain, practical, explicit sort, and it secures peace, my 
fellow citizens, in the only way in which peace can be secured. 

I remember, if I may illustrate a very great thing with a very 
trivial thing, I had two acquaintances who were very much addicted 
to profanity. Their friends were distressed about it. It subordi- 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 69 

nated a rich vocabulary which they might otherwise have cultivated, 
and so we induced them to agree that they never would swear inside 
the corporate limits, that if they wanted to swear they would go out 
of town. The first time the passion of anger came upon them they 
rather sheepishly got in a street car and went out of town to swear, 
and by the time they got out of town they did not want to swear. 
That very homely illustration illustrates in my mind the value of dis- 
cussion. Let me remind you that every fighting nation in the world 
is going to belong to this league, because we are going to belong 
to it, and they all make this solemn engagement with each other, 
that they will not resort to war in the case of any controversy until 
they have done one or other of two things, until they have either 
submitted the question at issue to arbitration, in which case they 
promise to abide by the verdict whatever it may be, or, if they do not 
want to submit it to arbitration, have submitted it to discussion by 
the council of the league. 

They agree to give the council six months to discuss the matter, 
to supply the council with all the pertinent facts regarding it, and 
that, after the opinion of the council is rendered, they will not 
then go to war if they are dissatisfied with the opinion until three 
more months have elapsed. They give nine months in which to 
spread the whole matter before the judgment of mankind, and if 
they violate this promise, if any one of them violates it, the covenant 
prescribes that that violation shall in itself constitute an act of 
war against the other members of the league. It does not provide 
that there shall be war. On the contrary, it provides for something 
very much more effective than war. It provides that that nation, 
that covenant-breaking nation, shall be absolutely cut off from inter- 
course of every kind with the other nations of the world; that no 
merchandise shall be shipped out of it or into it; that no postal 
messages shall go into it or come out of it; that no telegraphic 
messages shall cross its borders; and that the citizens of the other 
member States shall not be permitted to have any intercourse or 
transactions whatever with its citizens or its citizens with them. 
There is not a single nation in Europe that can stand that boycott 
for six months. There is not a single nation in Europe that is self- 
sufficing in its resources of food or anything else that can stand 
that for six months. And in those circumstances we are told that 
this covenant is a covenant of war. It is the most drastic covenant 
of peace that was ever conceived, and its processes are the processes 
of peace. The nation that does not abide by its covenants is sent 
to Coventry, is taboo, is put out of the society of covenant-respecting 
nations. 

This is a covenant of compulsory arbitration or discussion, and 
just so soon as you discuss matters, my fellow citizens, peace looks 



70 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

in at the window. Did you ever really sit down and discuss matters 

with your neighbor when you had a difference and come away in the 

same temper that you went in? One of the difficulties in our labor 

situation is that there are some employers who will not meet their 

employees face to face and talk with them. I have never known an 

instance in which such a meeting and discussion took place that both 

sides did not come away in a softened temper and with an access 

of respect for the other side. The processes of frank discussion are 

the processes of peace not only, but the processes of settlement, and 

those are the processes which are set up for all the powerful nations 

of the world. 

I want to say that this is an unparalleled achievement of thoughtful 

civilization. To my dying day I shall esteem it the crowning privi- 
lege of my life to have been permitted to put my name to a document 
like that; and in my judgment, my fellow citizens, when passion is 
cooled and men take a sober, second thought, they are all going to 
feel that the supreme thing that America did was to help bring this 
about and then put her shoulder to the great chariot of justice and of 
peace which was going to lead men along in that slow and toilsome 
march, toilsome and full of the kind of agony that brings bloody 
sweat, but nevertheless going up a slow incline to those distant 
heights upon which will shine at the last the serene light of justice, 
suffusing a whole world in blissful peace. 



ADDRESS AT AUDITORIUM, OMAHA, NEBR., 

SEPTEMBER 8, 1919. 



Mr. Chairman, my fellow citizens, I never feel more comfortable in 
facing my fellow citizens than when I can realize that I am not 
representing a peculiar cause, that I am not speaking for a single 
group of my fellow citizens, that I am not the representative of a 
party but the representative of the people of the United States. I 
went across the water with that happy consciousness, and in all the 
work that was done on the other side of the sea, where I was as- 
sociated with distinguished Americans of both political parties, we 
all of us constantly kept at our heart the feeling that we were ex- 
pressing the thoughts of America, that we were working for the 
things that America believed in. I have come here to testify that 
this treaty contains the things that America believes in. 

I brought a copy of the treaty along with me, for I fancy that, in 
view of the criticisms you have heard of it, you thought it consisted 
of only four or five clauses. Only four or five clauses out of this 
volume are picked out for criticism. Only four or five phrases in it 
are called to your attention by some of the distinguished orators who 
oppose its adoption. Why, my fellow citizens, this is one of the great 
charters of human liberty, and the man who picks flaws in it — or, 
rather, picks out the flaws that are in it, for there are flaws in it — 
forgets the magnitude of the thing, forgets the majesty of the thing, 
forgets that the counsels of more than 20 nations combined and were 
rendered unanimous in the adoption of this great instrument. Let 
me remind you of what everybody admits who has read the docu- 
ment. Everybody admits that it is a complete settlement of the mat- 
ters which led to this war, and that it contains the complete ma- 
chinery which provides that they shall stay settled. 

You know that one of the greatest difficulties in our own domestic 
affairs is unsettled land titles. Suppose that somebody were mis- 
chievously to tamper with the land records of the State of Nebraska, 
and that there should be a doubt as to the line of every farm. You 
know what would happen in six months. All the farmers would be 
sitting on their fences with shotguns. Litigation would penetrate 
every community, hot feeling would be generated, contests not only 

71 



72 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

of lawyers, but contests of force, would ensue. Very well, one of 
the interesting things that this treaty does is to settle the land titles 
of Europe, and to settle them in this way, on the principle that every 
land belongs to the people that live on it. This is actually the first 
time in human history that that principle was ever recognized in a 
similar document, and yet that is the fundamental American prin- 
ciple. The fundamental American principle is the right of the 
people that live in the country to say what shall be done with that 
country. We have gone so far in our assertions of popular right that 
we not only say that the people have a right to have a government 
that suits them, but that they have a right to change it in any respect 
at any time. Very well, that principle lies at the heart of this 
treaty. 

There are peoples in Europe who never before could say that the 
land they lived in was their own, and the choice that they were to 
make of their lives was their own choice. I know there are men in 
Nebraska who come from that country of tragical history, the now 
restored Republic of Poland, and I want to call your attention to the 
fact that Poland is here given her complete restitution ; and not only 
is she given the land that formerly belonged to the Poles, but she is 
given the lands which are now occupied by Poles but had been per- 
mitted to remain under other sovereignties. She is given those lands 
on a principle that all our hearts approve of. Take what in Europe 
they call High Silesia, the mountainous, the upper, portions of the 
district of Silesia. The very great majority of the people in High 
Silesia are Poles, but the Germans contested the statement that most 
of them were Poles. We said, " Very well, then, it is none of our 
business; we will let them decide. We will put sufficient armed 
forces into High Silesia to see that nobody tampers with the processes 
of the election, and then we will hold a referendum there, and those 
people can belong either to Germany or to Poland, as they prefer, 
and not as we prefer." And wherever there was a doubtful district 
we applied the same principle, that the people should decide and not 
the men sitting around the peace table at Paris. When these 
referenda are completed the land titles of Europe will be settled, and 
every country will belong to the people that live on it to do with what 
they please. You seldom hear of this aspect of this treaty, my fellow 
citizens. 

You have heard of the council that the newspaper men call the 
" big four." We had a very much bigger name for ourselves than 
that. We called ourselves the " supreme council of the principal 
allied and associated powers," but we had no official title, and some- 
times there were five of us instead of four. Those five represented, 
with the exception of Germany, of course, the great lighting nations 
of the world. They could have done anything with this treaty that 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 73 

they chose to do, because they had the power to do it, and they chose 
to do what had never been chosen before, to renounce every right of 
sovereignty in that settlement to which the people concerned did not 
assent. That is the great settlement which is represented in this 
volume. 

t/ And it contains, among other things, a great charter of liberty 
for the workingmen of the world. For the first time in history the 
counsels of mankind are to be drawn together and concerted for the 
purpose of defending the rights and improving the conditions of 
working people — men, women, and children — all over the world. 
Such a thing as that was never dreamed of before, and what you 
are asked to discuss in discussing the league of nations is the matter 
of seeing that this thing is not interfered with. There is no other 
way to do it than by a universal league of nations, and what is pro- 
posed is a universal league of nations/ Only two nations are for- the 
time being left out. One of them is Germany, because wemd. not 
think that Germany was ready to come in, because we felt that she 
ought to go through a period of probation. She says that she made a 
mistake. We now want her to prove it by not trying it again. She 
says that she has abolished all the old forms of government by which 
little secret councils of men, sitting nobody knew exactly where, de- 
termined the fortunes of that great nation and, incidentally, tried - 
to determine the fortunes of mankind; but we want her to prove 
that her constitution is changed and that it is going to stay changed; 
and then who can, after those proofs are produced, say " No " to a 
great people 60,000,000 strong, if they want to come in on equal terms 
with the rest of us and do justice in international affairs? I want 
to say that I did not find any of my colleagues in Paris disinclined to 
do justice to Germany. But I hear that this treaty is very hard on 
Germany. When an individual has committed a criminal act, the 
punishment is hard, but the punishment is not unjust. This nation 
permitted itself, through unscrupulous governors, to commit a crim- 
inal act against mankind, and it is to undergo the punishment, not 
more than it can endure, but up to the point where it can pay it must 
pay for the wrong that it has done. 

But the things prescribed in this treaty will not be fully carried 
out if any one of the great influences that brought that result about 
is withheld from its consummation. Every great fighting nation in 
the world is on the list of those who are to constitute the league of 
nations. I say every great nation, because America is going to be 
included among them, and the only choice, my fellow citizens, is 
whether we will go in now or come in later with Germany ; whether 
we will go in as founders of this covenant of freedom or go in as those 
who are admitted after they have made a mistake and repented. 



74 ADDRESSES OE PRESIDENT WDLSON. 

I wish I could do Avhat is impossible in a great company like this. 
I wish I could read that covenant to you, because I do not believe, if 
you have not read it yourself and have only listened to certain 
speeches that I have read, that you know anything that is in it. 
Why, my fellow citizens, the heart of that covenant is that there 
shall be no war. To listen to some of the speeches that you may have 
listened to or read, you would think that the heart of it was Jthat it 
was an arrangement for war. On the contrary, this is the heart of 
that treaty: The bulk of it is concerned with arrangements under 
which all the members of the league — that means everybody but Ger- 
many and dismembered Turkey — agree that they never will go to 
war without first having done one or other of two things — either 
submitted the question at issue to' arbitration, in which case they 
agree absolutely to abide by the verdict, or, if they do not care to 
submit it to arbitration, submitted it to discussion by the council of 
the league of nations, in which case they must give six months for 
the discussion and wait three months after the rendering of the 
decision, whether they like it or not, before they go to war. They 
agree to cool off for nine months before they yield to the heat of 
passion which might otherwise have hurried them into war. 

If they do not do that, it is not war that ensues; it is something 
that will interest them and engage them very much more than war; 
it is an absolute boycott of the nation that disregards the covenant. 
The boycott is automatic, and just as soon as it applies, then this 
happens : No goods can be shipped out of that country ; no goods can 
be shipped into it. No telegraphic message may pass either way 
across its borders. No package of postal matter — no letter — can 
cross its borders either way. No citizen of any member of the league 
can have any transactions of any kind with any citizen of that nation. 
It is the most complete isolation and boycott ever conceived, and 
there is not a nation in Europe that can live for six months without 
importing goods out of other countries. After they have thought 
about the matter for six months, I predict that they will have no 
stomach for war. 

All that you are told about in this covenant, so far as I can learn, is 
that there is an article 10. I will repeat article 10 to you ; I think I 
can repeat it verbatim, the heart of it at any rate. Every member of 
the league promises to respect and preserve as against external 
aggression — not as against internal revolution — the territorial integ- 
rity and existing political independence of every other member of the 
league, and if it is necessary to enforce this promise — I mean, for the 
nations to act in concert with arms in their hands to enforce it — then 
the council of the league shall advise what action is necessary. Some 
gentlemen who doubt the meaning of English words have thought that 



ADDRESSES OF PEESIDENT WDLSON. 75 

advice did not' mean advice, but I do not know anything else that it 
does mean, and I have studied English most of my life and speak it 
with reasonable correctness. The point is this: The council can not 
give that advice without the vote of the United States, unless it is 
a party to the dispute ; but, my fellow citizens, if you are a party to 
the dispute you are in the scrap anyhow. If you are a party, then the 
question is not whether you are going to war or not, but merely 
whether you are going to war against the rest of the world or with 
the rest of the world, and the object of war in that case will be to 
defend that central thing that I began by speaking about. That is 
the guaranty of the land titles of the world which have been estab- 
lished by this treaty. Poland, Czechoslavakia, Eoumania, Jugo- 
slavia — all those nations which never had a vision of independent 
liberty until now — have their liberty and independence guaranteed 
to them. If we do not guarantee them, then we have this interesting 
choice: I hear gentlemen say that we went into the recent war 
because we were forced into it, and their preference now is to wait to 
be forced in again. They do not pretend that we can keep out ; they 
merely pretend that we ought to keep out until we are ashamed not 
to go in. 

This is the covenant of the league of nations that you hear objected 
to, the only possible guaranty against war. I would consider my- 
self recreant to every mother and father, every wife and sweetheart 
in this country, if I consented to the ending of this war without a 
guaranty that there would be no other. You say, " Is it an absolute 
guaranty?" No; there is no absolute guaranty against human pas- 
sion; but even if it were only 10 per cent of a guaranty, would not 
you rather have 10 per cent guaranty against war than none ? '(Ii it 
only creates a presumption that there will not be war, would you not 
rather have that presumption than live under the certainty that 
there will be war? For, I tell you, my fellow citizens, I can predict 
with absolute certainty that within another generation there will be 
another world war if the nations of the world do not concert the 
method by which to prevent it. ' I 

But I did not come here this morning, I remind myself, so much to 
expound the treaty as to talk about these interesting things that we 
hear about that are called reservations. A reservation is an assent 
with a big but. We agree — but. Now, I want to call your attention 
to some of these buts. I will take them, so far as Ijcan remember the 
order, in the order in which they deal with clauses of the league 
itself. 

In the first article of the covenant it is provided that a nation can 
withdraw from the league on two years' notice, provided at the time 
of its withdrawal, that is to say, at the expiration of the two years, 



76 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

it has fulfilled all its international obligations and all its obligations 
under the covenant. Some of our friends are very uneasy about that. 
They want to sit close to the door with their hands on the knob, and 
they want to say, " We are in this thing but we are in it with infinite 
timidity ; we are in it only because you overpersuaded us and wanted 
us to come in, and we are going to try this thing every now and then 
and see if it is locked, and just as soon as we see anything we don't 
like, we are going to scuttle." Now, what is the trouble? What are 
they afraid of ? I want you to put this to every man you know who 
makes this objection, what is he afraid of? Is he afraid that when 
the United States withdraws it will not have fulfilled its interna- 
tional obligations? Is he willing to bring that indictment against 
this beloved country ? My fellow citizens, we never did fail to fulfill 
an international obligation and, God guiding and helping us, we 
never will. I for one am not going to admit in any connection the 
slightest doubt that, if we ever choose to withdraw, we will then have 
fulfilled our obligations. If I make reservations, as they are called, 
about this, what do I do ? This covenant does not set up any tribunal 
to judge whether we have fulfilled our obligations at that time or 
not. There is only one thing to restrain us, and that is the opinion 
of mankind. Are these gentlemen such poor patriots that they are 
afraid that the United States will cut a poor figure in the opinion of 
mankind ? And do they think that they can bring this great people 
to withdraw from that league if at that time their withdrawal would 
be condemned by the opinion of mankind? We have always been at 
pains to earn the respect of mankind, and we shall always be at 
pains to retain it. I for one am too proud as an American to say that 
any doubt will ever hang around our right to withdraw upon the 
condition of the fulfillment of our international obligations. 

I have already adverted to the difficulties under article 10 and will 
not return to it. That difficulty is merely, as I repeated it just now r 
that some gentlemen do not want to go in as partners, they want to 
go in as late joiners, because they all admit that in a war which im- 
perils the just arrangements of mankind, America, the greatest, rich- 
est, freest people in the world must take sides. We could not live 
without taking sides. We devoted ourselves to justice and to liberty 
when we were born, and we are not going to get senile and forget it. 

They do not like the way in which the Monroe doctrine is men- 
tioned. Well, I would not stop on a question of style. The Monroe 
doc trine is adopted. It is swallowed, hook, line, and sinker, and, be- 
ing carefully digested into the central organism of the whole instru- 
ment, I do not care what language they use about it. The language 
is entirely satisfactory so far as I understand the English language. 
That puzzles me, my fellow citizens. The English language seems 
to have got some neAv meaning since I studied it that bothers these 



ADDRESSES OF PEESIDEKT WILSON. 77 

gentlemen. I do not know what dictionaries they resort to. I do 
not know what manuals of conscience they can possibly resort to. 
The Monroe doctrine is expressly authenticated in this document, 
for the first time in history, by all the great nations of the world, 
and it was put there at our request. When I came back to this dear 
country in March I brought the first draft, the provisional draft, of 
the covenant of the league. I submitted it to the Foreign Relations 
Committee of the 'Senate of the United States, and I spent an evening 
discussing;, it with them. They made a number of suggestions. 
I carried every one of those suggestions to Paris, and every one of 
them was adopted. Now apparently they want me to go back to 
Paris and say, "We are much obliged to you, but we do not like the 
language." I suggested the other night that if they do not like 
that language there is another language in here. That page is 
English [illustrating] ; this page is French [illustrating] — the same 
thing. If the English does not suit them, let them engage the inter- 
est of some French scholar and see if they like the French better. 
It is the same thing. It is done in perfect good faith. Nobody was 
trying to fool anybody else. This is the genuine work of honest men. 
The fourth matter that they are concerned about is domestic 
questions, so they want to put in a reservation enumerating certain 
questions as domestic questions which everybody on both sides of the 
water admits are domestic questions. That seems to me, to say the 
least, to be a work of supererogation. It does not seem to me neces- 
sary l co specify what everybody admits, but they are so careful — I 
believe the word used to be " meticulous " — that they want to put in 
what is clearly implied in the whole instrument. " Well," you say, 
"why not?" Well, why not, my fellow citizens? The conference 
at Paris will still be sitting when the Senate of the United States has 
acted upon this treaty. Perhaps I ought not to say that so confi- 
dently. No man, even in the secrets of Providence, can tell how long 
it will take the United States Senate to do anything, but I imagine 
that in the normal course of human fatigue the Senate will have 
acted upon this treaty before the conference in Paris gets through 
with the Austrian treaty and the Bulgarian treaty and the Turkish 
treaty. They will still be there on the job. Now — every lawyer will 
follow me in this — if you take a contract and change the words, even 
though you do not change the sense, you have to get the other parties 
to accept those words. Is not that true? Therefore every reserva- 
tion will have to be taken back to all the signatories of this treaty, 
and I want you to notice that that includes Germany. We will have 
to ask Germany's consent to read this treaty the way we understand 
it. I want to tell you that we did not ask Germany's consent with 
regard to the meaning of any one of those terms while we were in 
Paris. We told her what they meant and said, " Sign here." Are 



78 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

there any patriotic Americans who desire the method changed? Do 
they want me to ask the assembly at Weimar if I may read the treaty 
the way it means but in words which the United States Senate thinks 
it ought to have been written in? You see, reservations come down 
to this, that they want to change the language of the treaty without 
changing its meaning and involve all the embarrassments. Because, 
let me say, there are indications— I am judging not from official dis- 
patches but from the newspapers — that people are not in as good a 
humor over in Paris now as they were when I was there, and it is 
going to be more difficult to get agreement from now on than it was 
then. After dealing with some of those gentlemen I found that 
they were as ingenious as any American in attaching unexpected 
meanings to plain words, and, having gone through the mill on the 
existing language, I do not want to go through it again on changed 
language. 

I must not turn away from this great subject without adverting to 
one particular in the treaty itself, and that is the provision with 
regard to the transfer of certain German rights in the Province of 
Shantung, China, to Japan. I have frankly said to my Japanese 
colleagues in the conference, and therefore I can without impropriet} 7 
say it here, that I was very deeply dissatisfied with that part of the 
treaty. But, my fellow citizens, Japan agreed at that very tinye^ and 
as part of the understanding upon which those clauses were pvit into 
the treaty, that she would relinquish every item of sovereign ;}t that 
Germany had enjoyed to China, and that she would retain only J what 
other nations have elsewhere in China, certain economic concessit > 
with regard to the railway and the mines, which she was to opera k. 
under a corporation and subject to the laws of China. As I say, I 
wish she could have done more. But suppose, as some have sug- 
gested, that we dissent from that clause in the treaty. You can not 
sign all of the treaty but one part, my fellow citizens. It is like the 
President's veto. He can not veto provisions in a bill. He has got 
either to sign the bill or veto the bill. We can not sign the treaty with 
the Shantung provision out of it, and if we could, what sort of service 
would we be doing to China ? 

Let us state the facts with brutal frankness. England and France 
are bound by solemn treaty, entered into before the conference at 
Paris, before the end of the Avar, to give Japan what she gets in this 
treaty in the Province of Shantung. They can not in honor withdraw 
f i'om that promise. They can not consent to a peace treaty which does 
not contain those provisions with regard to Shantung. England and 
Fiance, therefore, will stand behind Japan, and if we are not signa- 
tories to the treaties and not parties she will get all that Germany 
had in Shantung, more than she will get under the promises which 



ADDKESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 79 

she made to us, and the only Avay we can get it away from her is by 
going to war with Japan and Great Britain and France. Does that 
look like a workable proposition? Is that doing China a service? 
Whereas, if we do accept this treaty, we are members of the league of 
nations, China is a member of the league, and Japan is a member of 
the league, and under that much-criticized article 10 Japan promises 
and we guarantee that the territorial integrity and political inde- 
pendence of China will be respected and preserved. That is the way 
to serve China. That is the onry possible way in the circumstances to 
serve China. 

Therefore we can not rewrite this treaty. We must take it or leave 
it, and gentlemen, after all the rest of the world has signed it, will 
find it very difficult to make any other kind of treaty. As I took the 
liberty of saying the other night, it is a case of " put up or shut up." 
The world can not breathe in the atmosphere of negations. The 
world can not deal with nations who say, "We won't play!" The 
world can not have anything to do with an arrangement in which 
every nation says, " We will take care of ourselves." Is it possible, my 
fellow citizens — is it possible, for the sinister thing has been suggested 
to me— that there is a group of individuals in this country who have 
conceived it as desirable that the United States should exercise its 
power alone, should arm for the purpose, should be ready for the 
enterprise, and should dominate the world by arms? There are 
indications that there are groups of citizens in this country who do 
not find that an unpalatable program. Are we going to substitute 
for Pan Germanism a sinister Pan Americanism? The thing is 
inconceivable. It is hideous. No man dare propose that in plain 
words to any American audience anywhere. The heart of this people 
is pure. The heart of this people is true. This great people loves 
liberty . It loves justice. It would rather have liberty and justice 
than wealth and power. It is the great idealistic force of history, 
and the idealism of America is what has made conquest of the spirits 
of men. 

While I was in Paris men of every race, from every quarter of the 
globe, sought interviews with us in order to tell us how absolutely 
they believed in America and how all their thoughts, all their pleas 
for help, all their hope of political salvation, reached out toward 
America, and my heart melted within me. I said to some of the 
simpler sort among them, " I pray you that you will not expect the 
impossible. America can not do all the things that you are expecting 
her to do. The most that I can promise is that we will do everything 
we can." And we are going to redeem that promise, not because I 
made it, but because when I made it I spoke the purpose and heart 
of the United States. If I felt that I personally in any way stood 
in the way of this settlement, I would be glad to die that it might be 
consummated, because I have a vision, my fellow citizens, that if this 



80 ADDKESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

thing should by some mishap not be accomplished there would rest 
forever upon the fair name of this people a stain which could never 
be effaced, which would be intolerable to every lover of America, 
inconceivable to any man who knew the duty of America and was 
ready with stout heart to do it. 

I said just now at the opening that I was happy to forget on a 
campaign like this what party I belonged to, and I hope that you 
will not think that I am recalling what party I belong to if I say 
how proud I have been to stand alongside of Senator Hitchcock in 
this fight. I would be just as glad to stand by Senator Norris if he 
would let me. I refer to Senator Hitchcock because I know this is his 
home town and because of my personal regard for him, and because I 
wanted to make it the preface to say I want to be the brother and 
comrade and coworker of every man who will work for this great 
cause. It heartens me when I find, as I found in Des Moines and I 
find here, that there are more Republicans on the committees that 
meet me than Democrats. That may be in proportion to the popula- 
tion, but nevertheless I judge from what I see of these gentlemen 
that they are, at any rate, very favorable specimens and that I can 
take it for granted, because of what I see in my dealing with them, 
that they do represent some of the permanence and abiding influ- 
ences of great communities like this. Why, the heart of America 
beats in these great prairies and on these hillsides. Sometimes in 
Washington you seem very far away. The voices that are most audi- 
ble in Washington are not voices that anybody cares to listen to for 
very long, and it is refreshing to get out among the great body of 
one's fellow citizens and feel the touch of hand and the contact of 
shoulder and the impulse of mass movement which is going to make 
spiritual conquest of the world. 



ADDRESS AT COLISEUM, SIOUX FALLS, S. DAK., 

SEPTEMBER 8, 1919. 



Gov. Norbeck, my fellow citizens, I must admit that every time I 
face a great audience of my fellow countrymen on this trip I am 
filled with a feeling of peculiar solemnity, because I believe, my 
fellow countrymen, that we have come to one of the turning points in 
the history of the world, and what I as an American covet for this 
great country is that, as on other great occasions when mankind's 
fortunes hung in a nice poise and balance, America may have the 
distinction to lead the way. 

In order to enable you to realize some part of what is in my 
thought to-night, I am going to ask you to turn your thought back 
to the tragedy through which we have just passed. A little incident 
as we came along in the train to-day brought very close home to 
me the things that have been happening. A very quiet lady came up 
with a little crowd at a way station to shake hands with me, and she 
had no sooner taken my hand than she turned away and burst into 
tears. I asked a neighbor what was the matter, and he said she 
had meant to speak to me of her son who was dead in France, but 
that the words would not come from her lips. All over this country, 
my fellow citizens, there are women who have given up their sons, 
wives who have given up their husbands, young women who have 
given up their sweethearts, to die on the other side of the sea for a 
great cause which was not the peculiar cause of America but the 
cause of mankind and of civilization itself. I love to repeat what 
the people on the other side of the water said about those boys of 
ours. They told us that they did not look like any of the other 
soldiers, that they did not seem to be merely soldiers, that they 
seemed to be crusaders, that there was something in their eyes that 
they had never seen in the eyes of any other army, and I was re- 
minded of what I had so often seen on former journeys across the 
seas : Going over in the steerage, bright-eyed men who had been per- 
meated with the atmosphere of free America; coming back, among 
the immigrants coming from the old countries, dull-eyed men, tired- 
looking men, discouraged-looking men. They were all of them going 
both ways, men who had come from across the sea, but going out 

141677— S. Doc. 120, 66-3 6 81 






82 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

they were going with the look of America in their eyes to visit the 
old people at home ; coming back they had the fatigue of Europe in 
their eyes and had not yet got the feeling that penetrates every 
American, that there is a great future, that a man can handle his 
own fortunes, that it is his right to have his place in the world, and 
that no man that he does not choose is his master. And that is 
what these people saw in the eyes of the American boys who carried 
their arms across the sea. There was America in every one of those 
lively eyes, and America was not looking merely at the fields of 
France, was not merely seeking to defeat Germany ; she was seeking 
to defeat everything that Germany's action represented, and to see 
to it that there never happened such a thing again. 

I want to remind you, my fellow countrymen, that that war was 
not an accident. That war did not just happen. There was not 
some sudden occasion which brought on a conflagration. On the 
contrary, Germany had been preparing for that war for generations. 
Germany had been preparing every resource, perfecting every skill, 
developing every invention, which would enable her to master the 
European world ; and, after mastering the European world, to domi- 
nate the rest of the world. Everybody had been looking on. Every- 
body had known. For example, it was known in every war office in 
Europe, and in the War Department at Washington, that the Ger- 
mans not only had a vast supply of great field guns but that they had 
ammunition enough for every one of those guns to exhaust the gun. 
Yet we were all living in a fool's paradise. We thought Germany 
meant what she said — that she was armed for defense; and that 
she never would use that great store of force against the rest of her 
fellow men. Why, my friends, it was foreordained the minute 
Germany conceived these purposes that she should do the thing 
which she did in 1914. That assassination of the Austrian Crown 
Prince in Serbia was not what started the war. They were ready 
to start it and merely made that an occasion and an excuse. Before 
they started it, Serbia had yielded to practically every demand they 
made of her, and they would not let the rest of the world know that 
Serbia had yielded, because they did not want to miss the occasion 
to start the war. They were afraid that other nations would pre- 
pare. They were afraid that they had given too much indication of 
what they were going to do and thev did not want to wait. What 
immediately happened, when the other foreign offices of Europe 
learned of what was going on, was that from every other foreign 
office, so far as I have been able to learn, messages went to Berlin 
instructing their representatives to suggest to the German Govern- 
ment that the other Governments be informed and that an oppor- 
tunity 7 be obtained for a discussion, so as to see if war could not be 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 83 

avoided. And Germany did not dare discuss her purpose for 24 
hours. 

I have brought back from Europe with me, my fellow citizens, a 
treaty in which Germany is disarmed and in which all the other na- 
tions of the world agree never to go to war without first of all having 
done one or other of two things, either having submitted the question 
in dispute to arbitration, in which case they will abide by the verdict, 
or, if they do not care to submit it to arbitration, having submitted 
it to discussion by the league of nations; that they will allow six 
months for the discussion ; that they will publish all the facts to all 
the world; and that not until three months after the expiration of 
the six will they go to war. There is a period of nine months of 
cooling off, and Germany did not dare cool off for nine days ! If Ger- 
many had dreamed that anything like the greater part of the world 
would combine against her, she never would have begun the war, 
and she did not dare to let the opinion of mankind crystallize against 
her by the discussion of the purposes which she had in mind. What 
I want to point out to you to-night is that we are making a funda- 
mental choice. You have either got to have the old system, of which 
Germany was the perfect flower, or you have got to have a new system. 
You can not have a new system unless you provide a substitute, an 
adequate substitute, for the old, and when certain of our fellow citizens 
take the position that we do not want to go into any combination at 
all but want to take care of ourselves, all I have to say to them is that 
that is exactly the German position. 

Germany through the mouth of her Emperor — Germany through 
the mouths of her orators — Germany through the pens of her writers 
of all sorts — said, " Here we stand, ready to take care of ourselves. 
We will not enter into any combination. We are armed for self- 
defense and no nation dares interfere with our rights." That, it 
appears, is the American program in the eyes of some gentlemen; 
and I want to tell you that within the last two weeks the pro-German 
element in this country has lifted its head again. It is again heart- 
ened. It again has air in its lungs. It again says, " Ah, now we 
see a chance when America and Germany will stand outside this 
league and take care of themselves." Not take care of themselves 
as partners, I do not mean to intimate that, but where America will 
play the same role that Germany plays, under that old order which 
brought us through that agony of bloody sweat, that great agony 
in which the whole world seemed to be caught in the throes of a 
crisis, when for a long time we did not know whether civilization 
itself was going to survive or not. And do not believe, my fellow 
countrymen, that civilization is saved now. There were passions 
let loose upon the field of the world by that war which have not 



84 ADDRESSES OF PEESIDENT WELSOK". 

grown quiet yet, which will not grow quiet for a long time, and 
every element of disorder, every element of chaos, is hoping that 
there may be no steadying hand from a council of nations to hold 
the order of the world stead} T until we can make the final arrange- 
ments of justice and of peace. The treaty of peace with Germany is 
very much more than a treaty of peace with Germany. The Ger- 
man part of it takes a good many words, because there are a great 
many technical details to be arranged, but that is not the heart of the 
treaty. The heart of the treaty is that it undoes the injustice that 
Germany did; that it not only undoes the injustice that Germany 
did but it organizes the world to see that such injustice will in the 
future be impossible. 

And not forgetting, but remembering with intense sympathy the 
toiling mass of mankind, the conference at Paris wrote into the heart 
of that treaty a great charter of labor. I think that those of us who 
live in this happy land can have little conception of the conditions 
of labor in some of the European countries up to the period of the out- 
break of this war, and one of the things that that treaty proposes to 
do is to organize the opinion of all nations to assist in the betterment 
and the release of the great forces of labor throughout the world. 
It is a laboring man's treaty in the sense that it is the average man's 
treaty. Why, my fellow citizens, the thing that happened at Paris 
was absolutely and literally unprecedented. There never was a gath- 
ering of the leading statesmen of the world before who did not sit 
down to divide the spoils, to make the arrangements the most advan- 
tageous that they could devise for their own strong and powerful 
governments. Yet this gathering of statesmen sat themselves down 
to do something which a friend of mine the other day very aptly 
described as establishing the land titles of the world, because the prin- 
ciple underlying the treat3 r was that every land belonged to the native 
stock that lived in it, and that nobody had the right to dictate either 
the form of government or the control of territory to those people 
who were born and bred and had their lives and happiness to make 
there. The principle that nobody has the right to impose the sov- 
ereignty of any alien government on anybody was for the first time 
recognized in the counsels of international deliberation. In this 
league of nations covenant, which some men ask you to examine in 
a spot here and there with a magnifying glass, there lies at the heart 
of it this great principle, nobody has the right to take any territory 
any more. 

You will see what our situation was: The Austrian Empire, for 
example, had gone to pieces, and here we were with the pieces on 
the table. The Austrian treaty is not yet completed, but it is being 
made on the same principle as the German, and will serve as an 
illustration. In the old days they would have compacted it between 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 85 

armies. They did not do that this time. They said, " This piece 
belongs to the Poles and to nobody else. This piece belongs to the 
Bohemians and to nobody else. This piece belongs to Roumania, 
though she never could have got it for herself ; we are going to turn 
it over to her, though other people want it. This piece belongs to 
the Slavs, who live in the northern Balkans — the Jugo-Slavs as 
we have come to know them to be — and they shall have what belongs 
to them." When we turned to the property of Germany, which she 
had been habitually misgoverning— I mean the German colonies, 
particularly the colonies in Africa — there were many nations who 
would like to have had those rich, undeveloped portions of the 
world; but none of them got them. We adopted the principle of 
trusteeship. We said, " We will put you in charge of this, that, and 
the other piece of territory, and you will make an annual report to us. 
We will deprive you of your trusteeship whenever you administer 
it in a way which is not approved by our judgment, and we will put 
upon you this primary limitation, that you shall do nothing that 
is to the detriment of the people who live in that territory. You 
shall not enforce labor on it, and you shall apply the same principles 
of humanity to the work of their women and children that you 
apply at home. You shall not allow the illicit trade in drugs and in 
liquors. You shall not allow men who want to make money out of 
powder and shot to sell arms and ammunition to those who can use 
them to their own disadvantage. You shall not make those people 
fight in your armies. The country is theirs, and you must remember 
that and treat it as theirs." There is no more annexation. There 
is no more land grabbing. There is no more extension of sov- 
ereignty. It is an absolute reversal of history, an absolute revolu- 
tion in the way in which international affairs are treated; and it is 
all in the covenant of the league of nations. 

The old system was, Be ready, and we can be ready. I have heard 
gentlemen say, " America can take care of herself." Yes, she can take 
care of herself. Every man would have to train to arms. We would 
have to have a great standing army. We would have to have 
accumulations of military material such as Germany used to have. 
We would enjoy the luxuries of taxes even higher than we pay now. 
We could accumulate our force, and then our force would have to be 
directed by some kind of sufficiently vigorous central power. You 
would have a military government in spirit if not in form. No use 
having a fighting nation if there is not somebody to swing it ! If 
you do not want your President to be a representative of the civil 
purposes of this country, you can turn him into merely a commander 
in chief, ready to fight the world. But if you did nobody would 
recognize- America in those strange and altered circumstances. All 



86 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

the world would stand at amaze and say, " Has America forgotten 
everything that she ever professed ? " The picture is one that every 
American repudiates ; and I challenge any man who has that purpose 
at the back of his thought to avow it. If he comes and tells you that 
America must stand alone and take care of herself, ask him how it is 
going to be done, and he will not dare tell you, because you would 
show him the door and say, " We do not know any such American." 

Yet we can not do without force. You can not establish land titles, 
as I have expressed it, and not maintain them. Suppose that the land 
titles of South Dakota were disturbed. Suppose the farm lines were 
moved, say, 10 feet. You know what would happen. Along every 
fence line you would see farmers perching with guns on their knees. 
The only reason they are not perching now is that there are land deeds 
deposited in a particular place, and the whole majesty and force and 
judicial system of the State of South Dakota are behind the titles. 
Very well, we have got to do something like that internationally. You 
can not set up Poland, whom all the world through centuries has pitied 
and sympathized with, as the owner of her property and not have 
somebody take care that her title deeds are respected. You can not 
establish freedom, my fellow citizens, without force, and the only 
force you can substitute for an armed mankind is the concerted force 
of the combined action of mankind through the instrumentality of all 
the enlightened Governments of the world. This is the only con- 
ceivable system that you can substitute for the old order of things 
which brought the calamity of this war upon us and would assuredly 
bring the calamity of another war upon us. Your choice is between 
the league of nations and Germanism. I have told you what I mean 
by Germanism — taking care of yourselves, being armed and ready, 
having a chip on your shoulder, thinking of nothing but your own 
rights and never thinking of the rights of anybody else, thinking that 
you were put into this world to see that American might was asserted 
and forgetting that American might ought never to be used against 
the weak, ought never to be used in an unjust cause, ought never to be 
used for aggression; ought to be used with the heart of humanity 
beating behind it. 

Sometimes people call me an idealist. Well, that is the way I 
know I am an American. America, my fellow citizens — I do not 
say it in disparagement of any other great people — America is the 
only idealistic Nation in the world. When I speak practical judg- 
ments about business affairs, I can only guess whether I am speaking 
the voice of America or not, but when I speak the ideal purposes of 
history I know that I am speaking the voice of America, because I 
have saturated myself since I was a boy in the records of that spirit, 
and everywhere in them there is this authentic tone of the love of 
justice and the service of humanity. If by any mysterious influence 



L 



ADDKESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 87 

of error America should not take the leading part in this new enter- 
prise of concerted power, the world would experience one of those 
reversals of sentiment, one of those penetrating chills of reaction, 
which would lead to a universal cynicism, for if America goes back 
upon mankind, mankind has no other place to turn. It is the hope 
of nations all over the world that America will do this great thing. 
Yet I find some gentlemen so nervous about doing right that their eyes 
rest very uneasily on the first article of the covenant of the league of 
nations, and they say "That says that we can get out after two years' 
notice, if we have fulfilled all our international obligations at that 
time. Now, we want to make it perfect^ clear that we will get out 
when we want to." You can not make it perfectly clear in the way 
they want it, unless you make it perfectly clear at the outset that you 
want to get out. You can not choose the seat by the door and keep 
fumbling with the knob without creating the impression that you are 
going to get out in a minute ; that you do not like the company y ou 
are in; that you do not like the job; that you are by constitution and 
disposition a sc uttler ! If America goes into this thing, she is going 
to stay in, and she is going to stay in in order to see that justice is 
done. She can see to it, because if you read this covenant of the 
league you will find that, America being one of the members of the 
council of the league, nothing material can be done under that league 
without a unanimous vote of the council. America can determine 
what action is going to be taken. No action that is against her 
policy or against her will can be taken, unless her judgment is ren- 
dered in some case where she is one of the disputants, but, my fellow 
citizens, if she is one of the disputants, she is in trouble anyhow. If 
the war that they are trying to avert is her war, then I do not see 
that she is any more benefited by being out of the league than in it. 
On the contrary, if she is in the league, she has at least the good 
offices of other friendly States to see that some accommodation is 
reached. 

And she is doing exactly what she has done already. Some gentle- 
men forget that we already have nearly 30 treaties with the leading 
nations of the world. Yes ; and to do the very thing that is in this 
covenant, only we agree to take 12 months to discuss everything, 
whereas the league gives 9 months. The American choice would be 
12. We promise not to fight without first talking. I want to call a 
great many here witness to this circumstance, for I am sure by looking 
at you that you know something about it. What is the certain way to 
nave difficulty between capital and labor? It is to refuse to sit down 
in the same room and talk it over. I can not understand why one 
man or set of men should refuse to discuss claims or grievances with 
another set of men, unless they know to begin with that they are 
wrong. I am very averse from discussing anything when I know I 



88 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

have got the wrong end, but when I think I have got either the right 
end or as good an end as the other fellow, then I am perfectly willing 
to discuss it. There is an old saying accredited to a rather cynical 
politician of what I hope I may regard as the older school, who said 
to his son, " John, do not bother your head about lies ; they will take 
care of themselves; but if you ever hear me denying anything, you 
may be sure it is so." The only thing we are afraid of, the only thing 
we dodge, is the truth. If we see facts coming our way, it is just as 
well to get out of the way. Always take this attitude, my friends, 
toward facts ; Always try to see them coming first, so that they will 
not catch you at unawares. So with all matters, grading up from the 
smallest to the greatest. Human beings can get together by dis- 
cussion, and it is the business of civilization to get together by dis- 
cussion and not by fighting. That is civilization. The only reason 
this country is civilized is because we do not let two men who have a 
difference fight one another. We say, " Wait a minute ; we have 
arranged for that. Just around the corner there you will find a court- 
house. On certain days the court is sitting. Go and state the matter 
to those men, and neither before nor after the decision shall you touch 
one another." That is civilization. You have got the ordered proc- 
esses of consultation and discussion. You have got to act by rule, and 
justice consists in applying the same rule to everybody, not one rule 
to the rich man and another to the poor ; not one rule to the employer 
and another to the employee, but the same rule to the strong and to 
the weak. 

That is exactly what is attempted in this treaty. I can not under- 
stand the psychology of men who are resisting it. I can not under- 
stand what they are afraid of, unless it is that they know physical 
force and do not understand moral force. Moral force is a great deal 
more powerful than physical. Govern the sentiments of mankind 
and you govern mankind. Govern their fears, govern their hopes, 
determine their fortunes, get them together in concerted masses, and 
the whole thing sways like a team. Once get them suspecting one 
another, once get them antagonizing one another, and society itself 
goes to pieces. We are trying to make a society instead of a set of 
barbarians out of the governments of the world. I sometimes think, 
when I wake in the night, of all the wakeful nights that anxious 
fathers and mothers and friends have spent during those weary years 
of this awful war, and I seem to hear the cry, the inarticulate cry of 
mothers all over the world, millions of them on the other side of the 
sea and thousands of them on this side of the sea, " In God's name, 
give us the sensible and hopeful and peaceful processes of right and 
of justice!" 

America can stay out, but I want to call you to witness that the 
peace of the world can not be established without America. America 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 89 

is necessary to the peace of the world. And reverse the proposition : 
The peace and good will of the world are necessary to America. Dis- 
appoint the world, center its suspicion upon you, make it feel that 
you are hot and jealous rivals of the other nations, and do you think 
you are going to do as much business with them as you would other- 
wise do? I do not like to put the thing on that plane, my fellow 
countrymen, but if you want to talk business, I can talk business. If 
you want to put it on the low plane of how much money you can 
make, you can make more money out of friendly traders than out of 
hostile traders. You can make more money out of men who trust 
you than out of men who fear you. You can bring about a state of 
mind where by every device possible foreign markets will be closed 
to you, and men will say, "No; the wheat of America tastes bitter; 
we will eat the wheat of Argentina; we will eat the wheat of Aus- 
tralia, for that is the wheat of friendship, and this is the wheat of 
antagonism. We do not want to wear clothes made out of American 
cotton; we are going to buy just as much cotton from India as we 
can. We are going to develop new cotton fields. America is up to 
something; we do not know just what, and we are going to slur' anl 
lock every door we can against her.' 5 You can get the world in that 
temper. Do you think that would be profitable ? Do you think there 
is money in that ? But I am not going to dwell upon that side of it. 
I am just as sure of what you are thinking as I am of what I am 
thinking. We are not thinking of money. We would rather retain 
the reputation of America than have all the money in the world. I 
am not ready to die for money, and neither are you, but you are 
ready and I am ready to die for America. 

A friend of mine made a very poignant remark to me one day. He 
said : " Did you ever see a family that hung its son's yardstick or 
ledger or spade up over the mantelpiece ? " But how many of you 
have seen the lad's rifle, his musket, hung up ! Well, why ? A 
musket is a barbarous thing. The spade and the yardstick and the 
ledger are the symbols of peace and of steady business; why not 
hang them up ? Because they do not represent self-sacrifice. They 
do not glorify you. They do not dignify you in the same sense that 
the musket does, because when you took that musket at the call of 
your country you risked everything and knew you could not get any- 
thing. The most that you could do was to come back alive, but after 
you came back alive there was a halo about you. That boy was in 
France ! That boy served his country and served a great cause ! 
That boy risked everything to see that the weak peoples of the world 
were redeemed from intolerable tyranny ! Here comes — ah, how I 
wish I were going to be in Washington on the 17th — here comes, do 
you not hear it, the tread of the First Division; those men, along 



90 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

with their comrades, to whom the eyes of all Europe turn! All 
Europe took heart when they saw that brilliant flag unfurled on 
French soil. 

Did you ever hear that thrilling song that is being sung so much 
now of the blind Frenchman wishing to know if the Americans had 
come, bidding his son watch at the window. " Look, my lad, what 
are they carrying ? What are the colors ? Are they red stripes upon 
a field of white ? Is there a piece of heaven in the corner ? Is that 
piece of heaven full of stars ? *■ Ah, the Americans have come ! 
Thank God, the Americans have come ! " That is what we have at 
our hearts, my fellow citizens, and we hang the musket up, or the 
sword, over the mantelpiece. And if the lad is gone and dead, we 
share the spirit of a noble lady, who said to" me, without the glimmer 
of a tear in her eye : " I have had the honor of losing a son upon the 
fields of France. I have had the honor, not the pain. I have had 
the distinction of losing a son of mine upon the field of honor." It is 
that field of honor that we are going to redeem. We are not going to 
redeem it with blood any more, but we are going to make out of the 
counsels of the people of the world counsels of peace and of justice 
and of honor. 



ADDRESS BEFORE STATE LEGISLATURE, ST. PAUL, 

MINN., 

SEPTEMBER 9, 1919. 



Mr. Speaker, your excellency, gentlemen of the legislature, ladies 
and gentlemen, I esteem it an unusual privilege to stand in this place 
to-day and to address the members of this great body, because the 
errand upon which I have left Washington is so intimate a matter of 
the life of our own Nation as well as of the life of the world. Yet 
I am conscious, standing in this presence, that perhaps the most ap- 
propriate things I could allude to are those which affect us immedi- 
ately. I know that you have been called together in special session 
for special objects. One of those objects you have achieved, and I 
rejoice with you in the adoption of the suffrage amendment. An- 
other of the objects, I understand, is to consider the high cost of 
living, and the high cost of living is one of those things which are 
so complicated ; it ramifies in so many directions that it seems to me 
we can not do anything in particular without knowing how the 
particulars affect the whole. It is dangerous to play with a compli- 
cated piece of machinery, piece by piece, unless you know how the 
pieces are related to each other. 

The cost of living at present is a world condition. It is due to 
the fact that the man power of the world has been sacrificed in the 
agony of the battle field and that all the processes of industry have 
been either slackened or diverted. The production of foodstuffs, the 
production of clothing, the production of all the necessaries of life 
has either been slackened or it has been turned into channels which 
are not immediately useful for the general civil population. Great 
factories, as I need not tell you, in our own country which were de- 
voted to the uses of peace have recently been diverted in such fashion 
as to serve the purposes of war, and it will take a certain length of 
time to restore them to their old adjustments, to put their machinery 
to the old uses again, to redistribute labor so that it will not be con- 
centrated upon the manufacture of munitions and the other stuffs 
necessary for war, but will be devoted to the general processes of pro- 
duction so necessary for our life. 

Back of all that — and I do not say this merely for an argumenta- 
tive reason, but because it is true — back of that lies the fact that we 

91 



92 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

have not yet learned what the basis of peace is going to be. The 
world is not going to settle down, my fellow citizens, until it knows 
what part the United States is going to play in the peace. And that 
for a very interesting reason. The strain put upon the finances of 
the other Governments of the world has been all but a breaking 
strain. I imagine that it will be several generations before foreign 
Governments can finally adjust themselves to carrying the over- 
whelming debts which have been accumulated in this war. The 
United States has accumulated a great debt, but not in proportion to 
those that other countries have accumulated when you reckon our 
wealth as compared with theirs. We are the only nation in the world 
that is likely in the immediate future to have a sufficient body of 
free capital to put the industrial world, here and elsewhere, on its 
feet again. Until the industrial world here and elsewhere is put on 
its feet you can not finally handle the question of the cost of living, 
because the cost of living in the last analysis depends upon the things 
we are always talking about but do not know how to manage — the 
law of supply and demand. It depends upon manufacture and dis- 
tribution. It depends upon all the normal processes of the industrial 
and commercial world. It depends upon international credit. It 
depends upon shipping. It depends upon the multiplication of 
transportation facilities domestically. Our railroads at this moment 
are not adequate to moving the commerce of this country. Every 
here and there they run through a little neck — for example, the 
Pennsylvania system at Pittsburgh — where everything is congested 
and you are squeezing a great commerce through a little aperture. 
Terminal facilities at the ports are not adequate. The problem 
grows the more you think of it. What we have to put our minds to is 
an international problem, first of all — to set the commerce of the 
world going again and the manufacture of the world going again. 
And we have got to do that largely. Then we have got to see that 
our own production and our own methods of finance and our own 
commerce are quickened in every way that is possible. And then we, 
sitting in legislatures like this and in the Congress of the United 
States, have to see to it, if you will permit a vulgar expression, that 
" nobody monkeys with the process." 

I understand that one of the excellent suggestions made by your 
governor is that you look into the matter of cold storage. Well, 
there are other kinds of storage besides cold storage. There are all 
sorts of ways of governing and concentrating the reserve stocks of 
goods. You do not have to keep everj^thing cold, though you can 
keep the cold hand of control on it; you can manage by a concert 
that need not be put on paper to see to it that goods are doled out to 
the market so that they will not get there so fast as to bring the price 
down. The communities of the United States are entitled to see that 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 93 

these dams are removed and that the waters that are going to fructify 
the world flow in their normal courses. It is not easy. It is not 
always pleasant. You do not like to look censoriously into the 
affairs of your fellow citizens too much or too often, but it is neces- 
sary to look with a very unsympathetic eye at some of the processes 
which are retarding distribution and the supply which is going to 
meet the demand. 

Xot only that, but we have got to realize that we are face to face 
with a great industrial problem which does not center in the United 
States. It centers elsewhere, but which we share with the other 
countries of the world. That is the relation between capital and 
labor, between those who employ and those who are employed, and 
we might as well sit up straight and look facts in the face, gentlemen. 
The laboring men of the world are not satisfied with their relations 
with their employers. Of course, I do not mean to say that there is 
universal dissatisfaction, because here, there, and elsewhere, in 
many cases fortunately, there are very satisfactory relations, but I 
am now speaking of the general relationship which exists between 
capital and labor. Everywhere there is dissatisfaction, with it much 
more acute on the other side of the water than on this side, and one of 
the things that have to be brought about for mankind can be brought 
about by what we do in this country, because, as a matter of fact, if 
I may refer for a moment to the treaty of peace, there is a part of 
that treaty which sets up an international method of consultation 
about the conditions of labor. It is a splendid instrument locked up 
in that great document. I have called it frequently the Magna Charta 
of labor, for it is that, and the standards set up, for standards are 
stated, are the standards of American labor so far as they could be 
adopted in a general conference. The point I wish to make is that 
the world is looking to America to set the standards with regard to 
the conditions of labor and the relations between labor and capital, 
and it is looking to us because we have been more progressive thau 
other nations in those matters, though sometimes we have moved 
very slowly and with undue caution. As a result of our progressive- 
ness the ruling influences among our working men are conservative 
in the sense that they see that it is not in the interest of labor to break 
up civilization, and progressive in the sense that they see that a con- 
structive program has to be adopted. By a progressive I do not 
mean a man who is ready to move, but a man who knows where he is 
going when he moves. A man who has got a workable program is 
the only progressive, because if you have not got a workable program 
jou can not make it good and you can not progress. Very well, then, 
we have got to haA r e a constructive program with regard to labor, 
and the minute we get it we will relieve the strain all over the world, 
because the world will accept our standards and follow our example. 
I am not dogmatic about this matter. I can not presume that I knoAv 



94 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON". 

how it ought to be done. I know the principle upon which it ought 
to be done. The principle is that the interests of capital and the 
interests of labor are not different but the same, and men of business 
sense ought to know how to work out an organization which will ex- 
press that identity of interest. Where there is identity of interest 
there must be community of interest. You can not an}^ longer regard 
labor as a commodity. You have got to regard it as a means of 
association, the association of physical skill and physical vigor with 
the enterprise which is managed by those who represent capital : and 
when you do. the production of the world is going to go forward by 
leaps and bounds. 

Why is it that labor organizations jealously limit the amount of 
work that their men can do? Because they are driving hard bar- 
gains with you ; they do not feel that they are your partners at all, 
and so long as labor and capital are antagonistic production is going 
to be at its minimum. Just so soon as they are sympathetic and 
cooperative it is going to abound, and that will be one of the means 
of bringing down the cost of living. In other words, my fellow 
citizens, we can do something, we can do a great deal, along the lines 
of your governor's recommendation and along the lines that I took 
the liberty of recommending to the Congress of the United States, 
but we must remember that we are only beginning the push, that we 
are only learning the job, and that its ramifications extend into all 
the relationships of international credit and international industry. 
We ought to give our thought to this, gentlemen : America, though 
we do not like to admit it, has been very provincial in regard to the 
world's business. When we had to engage in banking transactions 
outside the United States we generally did it through English 
bankers or, more often, through German bankers. You did not find 
American banks in Shanghai and Calcutta and all around the circle 
of the world. You found every other bank there ; you found French 
banks and English banks and German banks and Swedish banks. 
You did not find American banks. American bankers have not, as 
a rule, handled international exchange, and here all of a sudden, as 
if by the turn of the hand, because of the sweeping winds of this 
war which have destroyed so many things, we are called upon to 
handle the bulk of international exchange: We have have got to 
learn it. and we have got to learn it fast. We have got to have 
American instrumentalities in every part of the world if American 
money is going to rehabilitate the world, as American money must. 

1 1 you say, " Why should we rehabilitate the world?" I will not 
suggest any altruistic motive; but if you want to trade you have 
got lo have somebody to trade with. If you want to carr}^ }^our 
business to the ends of the world, there must be business at the ends 
of the world to tie in with. And if the business of the world lags 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 95 

your industries lag and your prosperity lags. We have no choice 
but to be the servants of the world if we would be our own servants. 
I do not like to put it on that ground because that is not the American 
ground. America is ready to help the world, whether it benefits her 
or not. She did not come into the world, she was not created by 
the great men who set her Government up, in order to make money 
out of the rest of mankind. She was set up in order to rehabilitate 
the rest of mankind, and the dollar of American money spent to 
free those who have been enslaved is worth more than a million dol- 
lars put in any American pocket. 

It is in this impersonal way that I am trying to illustrate to you 
how the problem that we are facing in the high cost of living is the 
end and the beginning and a portion of a world problem, and the 
great difficulty, just now, my fellow citizens, is in getting some minds 
adjusted to the world. One of the difficulties that are being en- 
countered about the treaty and the league of nations, if I may be per- 
mitted to say so — and perhaps I can say so the more freely here be- 
cause I do not think this difficulty exists in the mind of either Sen- 
ator from this State — the difficulty is, not prejudice so much but 
that thing which is so common and so inconvenient — just downright 
ignorance. Ignorance, I mean, of the state of the world and of 
America's relation to the state of the world. We can not change 
that relation. It is a fact. It is a fact bigger than anybody of us, 
and one of the advantages that the United States has it ought not to 
forfeit; it is made up out of all the thinking peoples of the world. 
We do not draw our blood from any one source ; we do not draw our 
principles from any one nation ; we are made up out of all the sturdy 
stocks of the round world. We have gotten uneasy because some 
other kinds of stocks tried to come in ; but the bulk remains the same ; 
we are made up out of the hard-headed, hard-fisted, practical and 
yet idealistic, and forward-looking peoples of the world, and we of 
all people ought to have an international understanding, an ability 
to comprehend what the problem of the world is and what part we 
ought to play in that problem. We have got to play a part, and we 
can play it either as members of the board of directors or as outside 
speculators. We can play it inside or on the curb, and you know 
how inconvenient it is to play it on the curb. 

There is one thing that I respect more than any other, and that is 
a fact. I remember, when I was governor of the State of New Jer- 
sey, I was very urgently pressing some measures which a particular 
member of the senate of the State, whom I knew and liked very much, 
was opposed to. His constituents were very much in favor of it, and 
they sent an influential committee down personally to conduct his 
vote ; and after he had voted for the measure they brought him, look- 



96 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

ing a little sheepish, into my office to be congratulated. Well, he and 
I kept as straight faces as we could, and I congratulated him very 
warmly, and then with a very heavy wink he said to me behind his 
hand, " Governor, they never get me if I see 'em coming first." Now, 
that is not a ver}^ high political principle, but I commend that prin- 
ciple to you with regards to facts. Never let them get you if you see 
them coming first ; and any man with open eyes can see the facts com- 
ing, coming in serried ranks, coming in overwhelming power, not to 
be resisted by the United States or any other nation. The facts are 
marching and God is marching with them. You can not resist them. 
You must either welcome them or subsequently, with humilia- 
tion, surrender to them. It is welcome or surrender. It is accept- 
ance of great world conditions and great world duties or scuttle now 
and come back afterwards. 

But I am not arguing this with you, because I do not believe it is 
necessary in the State of Minnesota. I am. merely telling you. It is 
like the case of the man who met two of his fellow lawyers and asked 
them what they were discussing. They said, " We were discussing 
who is the leading member of the bar of this county," and the other 
said, a Why, I am." They said, "How do you prove it?" He said, 
" I don't have to prove it; I admit it." I think that that is the state 
of mind of the thoughtful persons of our country, and they, thank 
God, are the chief portions of it, with regard to the great crisis that 
we are face to face with now. 

It has been a privilege, gentlemen, to be permitted in this informal 
way to disclose to you some part of the thought which I am carrying 
about with me as really a great burden, because I haA^e seen the dis- 
turbed world on the other side of the water. I know the earnest hope 
and beautiful confidence with which they are looking toward us, and 
my heart is full of the burden of it. It is a great responsibility for 
us to carry. We will have to have infinite intelligence and infinite 
diligence in business to fulfill the expectations of the peoples of the 
world; and yet that is our duty, our inescapable duty, and we must 
concert together to perform it. 

Everywhere I have been on this trip the majority of the committee 
that has received me has consisted of Republicans, and nothing has 
pleased me so much, because I should be ashamed of myself if I per- 
mitted any partisan thought to enter into this great matter. If I 
were a scheming politician and anybody wished to present me with 
the peace of the world as a campaign issue, it would be very welcome, 
because there could be no issue easier to win on ; but everybody knows 
that that is not a worthy thought, everybody knows that we are all 
Americans. Scratch a Democrat or a Republican and underneath it 
is the same stuff. And the labels rub off upon the slightest effort — not 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 97 

the memories, the recollections ; some of them are very stubborn, but 
it is the principle that matters. The label does not make much differ- 
ence. The principle is just the same, and the only thing we differ 
about is the way to carry out the principle. Back of all lies that won- 
derful thing, that thing which the foreigner was amazed to see in 
the faces of our soldiers, that incomparable American spirit which 
you do not see the like of anywhere ; that universal brightness of ex- 
pression, as if every man know there was a future and that he had 
something to do with molding it, instead of that dull, expressionless 
face which means that there is nothing but a past and a burdensome 
present. You do not see that in the American face. The American 
face mirrors the future, and, my fellow citizens, the American pur- 
pose mirrors the future of the world, t^- *~ 
141677— S. Doc. 120, 6&-1 7 



ADDRESS AT MINNEAPOLIS, MINN., 
SEPTEMBER 9, 1919. 



Your honor, your excellency, my fellow countrymen, I have come 
here to discuss a very solemn question, and I shall have to ask your 
patience while you bear with me in discussing somewhat in detail the 
very great matter which now lies not only before the consideration of 
the people of the United States but before the consideration of the 
people of the world. You have heard so many little things about the 
treaty that perhaps you would like to hear some big things about it. 
To hear some gentlemen you would think it was an arrangement for 
the inconvenience of the United States, whereas, as a matter of fact, 
my fellow citizens, it is a world settlement, the first ever attempted, 
attempted upon broad lines which were first laid down in America. 
For, my fellow citizens, what does not seem to me realized in this 
blessed country of ours is the fact that the world is in revolution. 
I do not mean in active revolution. I do not mean that it is in a 
state of mind which will bring about the dissolution of governments. 
I mean that it is in a state of mind which may bring about the 
dissolution of governments if we do not enter into a world settlement 
which will really in fact and in power establish justice and right. 

The old order of things the rest of the world seemed to have got in 
some sense used to. The old order of things was not to depend upon 
the general moral judgment of mankind, not to base policies upon 
international right, but to base policies upon international power. 
So there were drawn together groups of nations which stood armed, 
facing one another, which stood drawing their power from the 
vitality of people who did not wish to be subordinated to them, draw- 
ing their vitality from the energy of great peoples who did not wish 
to devote their energy to force, but wished to devote their energy to 
peace. The world thought it was inevitable. This group of nations 
thought that it represented one set of principles; that group of 
nations thought that it represented another set of principles and that 
the best that could be accomplished in the world was this that they 
used to call the balance of power. 

Notice the phrase. Not the balance that you try to maintain in 
a court of justice, not the scales of justice, but the scales of force; 

99 



100 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

one great force balanced against another force. Every bit of the 
policy of the world, internationally speaking, was made in the interest 
of some national advantage on the part of the stronger nations of the 
world. It was either the advantage of Germany or the advantage of 
Great Britain or the advantage of Italy or the advantage of Japan. 
I am glad to say that I am not justified in adding that the policy of 
the world was ever conceived by us upon the basis of the advantage 
of America. We wished always to be the mediators of justice and of 
right, but we thought that the cool spaces of the ocean to the east and 
the west of us would keep us from the infections that came, arising like 
miasmatic mists out of that arrangement of power and of suspicion 
and of dread. 

I believe, my fellow countrymen, that the only people in Europe 
who instinctively realized what was going to happen and what did 
happen in 1914 was the French people. It has been my privilege to 
come into somewhat intimate contact with that interesting and 
delightful people, and I realize now that for nearly 50 years, ever since 
the settlement which took Alsace-Lorraine away from them in 1871, 
they have been living under the constant dread of the catastrophe 
which at last came ; and their thought throughout this conference was 
that they must concert some measure, must draw together some kind 
of cooperative force, which would take this intolerable dread from 
their hearts, that they could not live another 50 years, expecting what 
would come at last. But the other nations took it lightty. There were 
wise men in Great Britain, there were wise men in the United States, 
who pointed out to us not only what they suspected, but what we all 
knew with regard to the preparations for the use of force in Europe. 
Nobody was ignorant of what Germany was doing. What we shut 
our eyes against deliberately was the probability that she would make 
the use of her preparation that she did finally make of it. Her mili- 
tary men published books and told us what they were going to do 
with it, but we dismissed them. We said, " The thing is a nightmare. 
The man is a crank. It can not be that he speaks for a great Gov- 
ernment. The thing is inconceivable and can not happen.'' Very 
well, could not it happen ? Did not it happen ? Are we satisfied now 
what the balance of power means ? It means that the stronger force 
will sometimes be exercised or an attempt be made to exercise it to 
crush the other powers. 

The great nations of the world have been asleep, but God knows the 
other nations have not been asleep. I have seen representatives of 
peoples over there who for generations through, in the dumbness of 
unutterable suffering, have known what the weight of those arma- 
ments and the weight of that power meant. The great Slavic people, 
the great Roumanian people, the people who were constantly under 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 101 

the pressure of that power, the great Polish people — they all knew, 
but they were inarticulate ; there was no place in the world where they 
dared speak out. Now the catastrophe has come. Blood has been 
spilt in rivers, the flower of the European nations has been destroyed, 
and at last the voiceless multitudes of men are awake, and they have 
made up their minds that rather than have this happen again, if the 
governments can not get together, they will destroy the governments. 

I am not speaking revolution, my friends. I believe that the most 
disastrous thing that can happen to the underman, to the man who is 
suffering, to the man who has not had his rights, is to destroy public 
order, for that makes it certain he never can get his rights. I am far 
from intimating that, but I am intimating this, that the people of the 
world are tired of every other kind of experiment except the one we 
are going to try. I have called it an experiment ; I frankly admit that 
it is an experiment, but it is a very promising experiment, because 
there is not a statesman in the world who does not know that his 
people demand it. He is not going to change his mind. He is not 
going to change his direction. He is not speaking what he wants, it 
may be, but he is speaking what he knows he must speak, and that 
there is no turning back ; that the world has turned a corner that it 
will never turn again. The old order is gone, and nobody can build it 
up again. 

In the meantime what are men doing? I want you to reflect upon 
this, my fellow countrymen, because this is not a speech-making 
occasion ; this is a conference. I want you men to reflect upon what 
I am about to call your attention to. The object of the war was to 
destroy autocratic power; that is to say, to make it impossible that 
there should be anywhere, as there was on Wilhelmstrasse, in Berlin, 
a little group of military men who could brush aside the bankers, 
brush aside the merchants, brush aside the manufacturers, brush 
aside the Emperor himself, and say, " We have perfected a machine 
with which we can conquer the world; now stand out of the way, 
we are going to conquer the world." There must not be that possi- 
bility any more. There must not be men anywhere in any private 
place who can plot the mastery of civilization. But in the meantime 
look at the pitiful things that are happening. There is not a day 
goes by, my fellow citizens, that my heart is not heavy to think of 
our fellow beings in that great, pitiful kingdom of Russia, without 
form, without order, without government. Look what they have 
done. They have permitted a little handful of men — I am told there 
are only 34 of them constituting the real Bolshevist government— to 
set up a minority government just as autocratic and just as cruelly 
unmerciful as the government of the Czar ever was. The danger to 
the world, my fellow citizens, against which we must absolutely 



102 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

lock the door in this country, is that some governments of minorities 
may be set up here as elsewhere. We will brook the control of no 
minority in the United States. For my own part, I would as leave 
live under one autocracy as another ; I would as leave obey one group 
as another; I would as leave be the servant of one minority as 
another, but I do not intend to be the servant of any minority. As I 
have told you, the mass of men are awake. They are not going to let 
the world sink back into that old slough of misused authority again. 

Very well, then, what are we discussing? What are we debating 
in the United States?' Whether we will take part in guiding and 
steadying the world or not. And some men hesitate. It is the only 
country in the world whose leadership and guidance will be accepted. 
If we do not give it, we may look forward, my fellow citizens, to 
something like a generation of doubt and of disorder Avhich it will 
be impossible to pass through without the wreckage of a very con- 
siderable part of our slowly constructed civilization. America and 
her determinations now constitute the balance of moral force in the 
world, and if we do not use that moral force we will be of all peoples 
the most derelict. We are in the presence of this great choice, in the 
presence of this fundamental choice, whether we will stand by the 
mass of our own people and the mass of mankind. Pick up the great 
volume of the treaty. It is a great volume. It is as thick as that 
[illustrating]. You would think it just had three or four articles in 
it to hear some men talk about it. It is a thick volume, containing 
the charter of the new order of the world. I took the pains to write 
down here some of the things that it provides for, and if you will be 
patient I will read them, because I can make it more brief that way. 

It provides for the destruction of autocratic power as an instru- 
ment of international control, admitting only self-governing nations 
to the league of nations. Had you ever been told that before? No 
nation is admitted to the league of nations whose people do not con- 
trol its government. That is the reason that we are making Germany 
wait. She says that henceforth her people are going to control her 
Government, but Ave have got to wait and see. If they do control it, 
she is as welcome to the league as anybody else, because we are not 
holding nations off. We are holding selfish groups of men off. We 
are not saying to peoples, " We do not want to be your comrades and 
serve you along with the rest of our fellow beings," but we. are say- 
ing, " It depends upon your attitude ; if you take charge of your 
own affairs, then come into the game and welcome." The league of 
nations sends autocratic governments to Coventry. That is the first 
point. 

It provides for the substitution of publicity, discussion and arbitra- 
tion for war. That is the supreme thing that it does. I will not go 
into details now, but every member of the league promises not to go 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 103 

to war until there has been a discussion and a cooling off of nine 
months, and, as I have frequently said on this tour, if Germany had 
submitted to discussion for nine days she never would have dared go 
to war. Though every foreign office in Europe begged her to do so, 
she would not grant 24 hours for a meeting of the representatives of 
the Governments of the world to ask what it was all about, because 
she did not dare tell what it was all about. Nine months' cooling off 
is a very valuable institution in the affairs of mankind. And you 
have got to have a very good case if you are willing that all your 
fellow men should know the whole case, for that is provided for, and 
talk about it for nine months. Nothing is more valuable, if you 
think your friend is a fool, than to induce him to hire a hall. If you 
think he is a fool the only way to prove it is to let him address a mass 
of his fellow citizens and see how they like his ideas. If they like 
them and you do not, it may be that you are the fools ! The proof is 
presented at any rate. 

Instead of using force after this period of discussion, something 
very much more effective than force is proposed, namely, an abso- 
lute boycott of the nation that does not keep its covenant, and when 
I say an absolute boycott I mean an absolute boycott. There can not 
be any kind of intercourse with that nation. It can not sell or buy 
goods. It can not receive or send messages or letters. It can not 
have any transactions with the citizens of any member of the league, 
and when you consider that the league is going to consist of every 
considerable nation in the world, except Germany, you can see what 
that boycott will mean. There is not a nation in the world, except 
this one, that can live without importing goods for nine months, and 
it does not make any difference to us whether we can or not, be- 
cause we always fulfill our obligations, and there will never be a 
boycott for us. 

It provides for placing the peace of the world under constant 
international oversight, in recognition of the principle that the peace 
of the world is the legitimate and immediate interest of every nation. 
Why, as it stands at present, my fellow citizens, if there is likely to 
be trouble between two nations other than the United States it is 
considered an unfriendly and hostile act for the United States to 
intervene. This covenant makes it the right of the United States, 
and not the right of the United States merely, but the right of the 
weakest nation in the world to bring anything that the most 
powerful nation in the world is doing that is likely to disturb the 
peace of the world under the scrutiny of mankind. [Voice in audi- 
ence, "And that is right ! "] My friend in the audience says that is y^ 
right, and it undoubtedly is, because the peace of the world is every- lr 
body's business. Yet this is the first document that ever recognized 



104 ADDKESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

that principle. We now have the attitude of the Irishman, you know, 
who went into one of those antique institutions known as a saloon. 
It was rather a large place, and he saw two men fighting over in the 
corner. He went up to the bartender and he said, " Is this a private 
fight, or can everybody get in ? " Now, in the true Irish spirit, we are 
abolishing private fights, and we are making it the law of mankind 
that it is everybody's business and everybody can get in. The conse- 
quence is that there will be no attempt at private fights. 

It provides for disarmament on the part of the great fighting na- 
tions of the world. 

It provides in detail for the rehabilitation of oppressed peoples, 
and that will remove most of the causes of war. 

It provides that there shall be no more annexations of territory 
anywhere, but that those territories whose people are not ready to 
govern themselves shall be intrusted to th'eTirusteeship of the nations 
that can take care of them, the trustee nation to be responsible in 
annual reports to the league of nations ; that is to say, to mankind in 
general, subject to removal and restricted in respect to anything that 
might be done to that population which would be to the detriment 
of the population itself. So that you can not go into darkest Africa 
and makes slaves of those poor people, as some governments at times 
have done. 

It abolishes enforced labor. It takes the same care of the women 
and children of those unschooled races that we try to take of the 
women and children of ours. Why, my fellow citizens, this is the 
great humane document of all time. 

It provides that every secret treaty shall be invalid. It sweeps the 
table of all private understandings and enforces the principle that 
there shall be no private understandings of any kind that an}^body 
is bound to respect. One of the difficulties in framing this treaty 
was that after we got over there private — secret — treaties were 
springing up on all sides like a noxious growth. You had to guard 
your breathing apparatus against the miasma that arose from some 
of them. But they were treaties, and the war had been fought on 
the principle of the sacredness of treaties. We could not propose 
that solemn obligations, however unwisely undertaken, should be 
disregarded, but we could do the best that was possible in the pres- 
ence of those understandings and then say, " No more of this ; no 
more secret understandings." And the representatives of every great 
nation in the world assented without demur — without the slightest 
difficulty. 

I do not think you realize what a change of mind has come over 
the world. As we used to say in the old days, some men that never 
i got it before have got religion. 
\ It provides for the protection of dependent peoples. 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 105 

It provides that high standards of labor, such as are observed in 
the United States, shall be extended to the workingman everywhere 
in the world. 

-It provides that all the great humane instrumentalities, like the 
Red Cross, like the conventions against the opium trade, like the regu- 
lation of the liquor traffic with debased and ignorant people, like the 
prohibition of the selling of arms and ammunition to people who can 
use them only to their own detriment, shall be under the common 
direction and control of the league of nations. Now, did you ever 
hear of all these things before? That is the treaty, my fellow citi- 
zens ; and I can only conjecture that some of the men who are fighting 
the treaty either never read it themselves or are taking it for granted 
that you will not read it. I say without hesitation that no interna- 
tional agreement has ever before been drawn up along those lines— 
of the universal consideration of right and the interest of humanity. 

Now, it is said that that is all very well, but we need not go in. 
Well, of course we need not. There is perfect freedom of the will. 
I am perfectly free to go to the top of this building and jump off, but 
if I do I will not take very much interest in human affairs. The 
Nation is at liberty in one sense to do anything it pleases to discredit 
itself; but this is absolutely as certain as I stand here, that it never 
will do anything to discredit itself. Our choice in this great enter- 
prise of mankind that I have tried to outline to you is only this: 
Shall we go in and assist as trusted partners or shall we stay out and 
act as suspected rivals? We have got to do one or the other. We 
have got to be either provincials or statesmen. We have got to be 
either ostriches or eagles. The ostrich act I see being done all around 
me. I see gentlemen burying their heads in something and thinking 
that nobody sees that they have submerged their thinking apparatus. 
That is what I mean by being ostriches. What I mean by being eagles 
I need not describe to you. I mean leaving the mists that lie close 
along the ground, getting upon strong wing into those upper spaces 
of the air where you can see with clear eyes the affairs of mankind, 
see how the affairs of America are linked with the affairs of men 
everywhere, see how the whole world turns with outstretched hands 
to this blessed country of ours and says, " If you will lead, we will 
follow." God helping us, my fellow countrymen, we will lead when 
they follow. The march is still long and toilsome to those heights 
upon which there rests nothing but the pure light of the justice of 
God, but the whole incline of affairs is toward those distant heights ; 
and this great Nation, in serried ranks, millions strong — presently 
hundreds of millions strong — will march at the fore of the great pro- 
cession, breasting those heights with its eyes always lifted to the 
eternal goal ! 



ADDRESS AT AUDITORIUM, ST. PAUL, MINN., 
SEPTEMBER 9, 1919. 



Mr. Chairman, my fellow countrymen, I am very happy that the 
mayor sounded the note that he has just sounded, because by some 
sort of divination he realized what was in my heart to-night. I do 
not feel since I have left Washington this time that I am on an 
ordinary errand. I do not feel that I am on a political errand, even 
in the broad sense of that term. I feel rather that I am going about 
to hold counsel with my fellow countrymen concerning the most 
honorable and distinguished course which our great country can 
take at this turning point in the history of the world. And the mayor 
was quite right when he said that this is a conference concerning the 
true interpretation of the American spirit. I believe, I hope without 
an undue touch of national pride, that it is only the American spirit 
that can be the true mediator of peace. 

The theme that I find uppermost in my thought to-night is this: 
We are all actuated, my fellow countrymen, by an intense conscious- 
ness and love of America. I do not think that it is f anc} 7 on my part ; 
it is based upon long experience that in every part of the world I 
can recognize an American the minute I see him. Yet that is not 
because we are all of one stock. We are of more varied origins and 
stocks than any people in the world. We come from all the great 
races of the world. We are made up out of all the nations and 
peoples who have stood at the center of civilization. In this part 
of the country it is doubtful whether in some of our great cities 50 
per cent of the people come of parents born in America. One of the 
somewhat serious jests which I allowed myself to indulge on the 
other side of the water was with my Italian colleagues when they 
were claiming the city of Fiume upon the Adriatic because of its 
Italian population, and other cities scattered here and there whose 
surrounding population was not Italian but in whom an Italian ele- 
ment played an important part. I said, " That is not a sufficient 
argument for the extension of Italian sovereignty to these people, 
because there are more Italians in New York City than in any city 
in Italy, and I doubt if you would feel justified in suggesting that 

107 



108 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

the sovereignty of Italy be extended over the city of New York." 
I advert to this, my feDow citizens, merely as one illustration, that 
could be multiplied a hundredfold, of the singular make-up of this 
great Nation. 

I do not know how it happens that we are all Americans ; we are so 
different in origin ; we are so different in memories. The memory of 
America does not go very far back as measured by the distances of 
history, and great millions of our people carry in their hearts the 
traditions of other people, the traditions of races never bred in 
America ; yet we are all unmistakably and even in appearance Ameri- 
cans, and nothing else. There is only one possible explanation for 
that, my fellow citizens, and that is that there is in the practice and 
in the tradition of this country a set of principles which, however 
imperfectly, get into the consciousness of every man who lives in this 
country. 

One of the chief elements that make an American is this : In almost 
every other country there is some class that dominates, or some govern- 
mental authority that determines the course of politics, or some 
ancient system of land laws that limits the freedom of land tenure, or 
some ancient custom which ties a man into a particular groove in the 
land in which he lives. There is none of that in America. Every man 
in America, if he behaves himself, knows that he stands on the same 
footing as every other man in America, and, thank goodness, we are 
in sight of the time when every woman will know that she stands upon 
the same footing. We do not have to ask anybody's leave what we 
shall think or what we shall do or how we shall vote. We do not have 
to get the approval of a class as to our behavior. We do not have to 
square ourselves with standards that have been followed ever since 
our great-grandfathers. We are very much more interested in being 
great-grandfathers than in having had great-grandfathers, because 
our view is to the future. America does not march, as so many other 
peoples march, looking back over its shoulder. It marches with its 
eyes not only forward, but with its eyes lifted to the distances of 
history, to the great events which are slowly culminating, in the 
Providence of God, in the lifting of civilization to new levels and new 
achievements. That is what makes us Americans. 

And yet I was mistaken a moment ago when I said we are noth- 
ing else, because there are a great many hyphens left in America. 
For my part, I think the most un-American thing in the world is 
a hyphen. I do not care what it is that comes before the word 
" American." It may be a German- American, or an Italian- Ameri- 
can, a Swedish- American, or an Anglo-American, or an Irish- 
American. It does not make any difference what comes before 
the " American," it ought not to be there, and every man who 
comes to take counsel with me with a hyphen in his conversa- 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 109 

tion I take no interest in whatever. The entrance examination, 
to use my own parlance, into my confidence is, " Where do you put 
America in your thoughts ? Do you put it first, always first, unques- 
tionably first?" Then we can sit down together and talk, but not 
otherwise. Now, I want you distinctly to understand that I am not 
quarreling with the affectionate memories of people who have drawn 
their origin from other countries. I no more blame a man for 
dwelling with fond affection upon the traditions of some great 
race not bred in America than I blame a man for remembering with 
reverence his mother and his father and his forebears that bred him 
and that gave him a chance in the world. I am not quarreling with 
those affections ; I am talking about purposes. Every purpose is for 
the future, and the future for Americans must be for America. 

We have got to choose now, my fellow citizens, what kind of future 
it is going to be for America. I think that what I have said justifies 
me in adding that this Nation was created to be the mediator of 
peace, because it draws its blood from every- civilized stock in the 
world and is ready by sympathy and understanding to understand 
the peoples of the world, their interests, their rights, their hopes, 
their destiny. America is the only Nation in the world that has that 
equipment. Every other nation is set in the mold of a particular 
breeding. We are set in no mold at all. Every other nation has 
certain prepossessions which run back through all the ramifications 
of an ancient history. We have nothing of the kind. We know 
what all peoples are thinking, and yet we by a fine alchemy of our 
own combine that thinking into an American plan and an American 
purpose. America is the only Nation which can sympathetically 
lead the world in organizing peace. 

Constantly, when I was on the other side of the water, delegations 
representing this, that, and the other peoples of Europe or of Asia 
came to visit me to solicit the interest of America in their fortunes, 
and, without exception, they were able to tell me that they had kins- 
men in America. Some of them, I am ashamed to sav, came from 
countries I had never heard of before, and yet even they were able to 
point, not to a handful,, not to a few hundreds, but to several thousand 
kinsmen in America. I never before knew that they came, but they 
are here and they are our interpreters, the interpreters on our behalf 
of the interests of the people from whom they sprang. They came to 
America as sort of advanced couriers of those people. They came in 
search of the Golden West. They came in search of the liberty that 
they understood reigned among that free and happy people. They 
were drawn by the lure of justice, by the lure of freedom, out of lands 
Avhere they were oppressed, suppressed, where life was made im- 
possible for them upon the free plane that their hearts had conceived. 
They said, "Yonder is our star in the west," and then the word went 



110 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

home, "We have found the land. They are a free people that are 
capable of understanding us. You go to their representatives in Paris 
and put your case before them, and they will understand." What a 
splendid thing that is, my fellow countrymen ! I want you to keep 
this in your minds as a conception of the question that we are now 
called upon to decide. 

To hear some men talk about the league of nations you would 
suppose that it was a trap set for America ; you would suppose that it 
was an arrangement by which we entered into an alliance with other 
great, powerful nations to make war some time. Why, my fellow 
countrymen, it bears no resemblance to such description. It is a great 
method of common counsel with regard to the common interests of 
mankind. We shall not be drawn into wars ; we shall be drawn into 
consultation, and we will be the most trusted adviser in the whole 
group. Consultation, discussion, is written all over the whole face 
of the covenant of the league of nations, for the heart of it is that the 
nations promise not to go to war until they have consulted, until they 
have discussed, until all the facts in the controversy have been laid 
before the court which represents the common opinion of mankind. 

That is the league of nations. Nothing can be discussed there that 
concerns our domestic affairs. Nothing can be discussed there that 
concerns the domestic affairs of any other people, unless something 
is occurring in some nation which is likely to disturb the peace of 
the world, and any time that any question arises which is likely to 
disturb the peace of the world, then the covenant makes it the 
right of any member, strong or weak, big or little, of that 
universal concert of the nations to bring that matter up for clarifica- 
tion and discussion. Can you imagine anything more calculated to 
put war off, not only to put it off, but to make it violently improb- 
able? When a man wants to fight he does not go and discuss the 
matter with the other fellow. He goes and hits him, and then some- 
body else has to come in and either join the fight or break it up. I 
used a very homely illustration the other night, which perhaps it 
msij not be amiss for me to use again. I had two friends who were 
becoming more and more habitually profane. Their friends did not 
like it. They not only had the fundamental scruple that it was 
wrong, but they also thought, as I heard a very refined lady say, " It 
was not only wrong but, what was worse, it was vulgar." They did 
not like to see their friends adjourning all the rest of their vocabu- 
larly and using only those words. So they made them enter into a 
solemn agreement — I ought to say they lived in a large city — that 
they would not swear inside the corporate limits ; that if they got in 
a state of mind which made it necessary to explode in profanity they 
would get out of town and swear. 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. Ill 

The first time the passion came upon them and they recalled their 
promise they got sheepishly on a street car and made for the town 
limits, and I need hardly tell you that when they got there they no 
longer wanted to swear. They had cooled off. The long spaces of 
the town, the people going about their ordinary business, nobody 
paying any attention to them, the world seeming to be at peace when 
they were at war, all brought them to a realization of the smallness 
of the whole business, and they turned around and came into town 
again. Comparing great things with small, that will suffice as a 
picture of the advantage of discussion in international matters as 
well as in individual matters, because it was universally agreed on the 
other side of the water that if Germany had allowed the other Gov- 
ernments to confer with her 24 hours about the recent war, it could 
not have taken place. We know why. It was an unconscionable war. 
She did not dare discuss it. You can not afford to discuss a thing 
when you are in the wrong, and the minute you feel that the whole 
judgment of the world is against you, you have a different temper 
in affairs altogether. 

This is a great process of discussion that we are entering into, 
and my point to-night — it is the point I want to leave with you — is 
that we are the people of all people in the world intelligently to 
discuss the difficulties of the nations which we represent, although 
we are Americans. We are the predestined mediators of mankind, y 
I am not saying this in any kind of national pride or vanity. I be- 
lieve that is mere historic truth, and I try to interpret circumstances 
in some intelligent way. If that is the kind of people we are, it 
must have been intended that we should make some use of the oppor- 
tunities and powers that we have, and when I hear gentlemen say- 
ing that we must keep out of this thing and take care of ourselves 
I think to myself, " Take care of ourselves ? Where did we come 
from ? Is there nobody else in the world to take care of ? Have we 
no sympathies that do not run out into the great field of human ex- 
perience everywhere? Is that what America is, with her mixture 
of bloods ? " Why, my fellow citizens, that is a fundamental miscon- 
ception of what it is to be an American, and these gentlemen are 
doing a harm which they do not realize. I want to testify to you 
here to-night, my fellow citizens, because I have the means of in- 
formation, that since it has seemed to be uncertain whether we are 
going to play this part of leadership in the world or not, this part 
of leadership in accommodation, the old intrigues have stirred up in 
this country again. That intrigue which we universally condemn — 
that hyphen which looked to us like a snake, the hyphen between 
" German " and "American " — has reared its head again, and you 
hear the " his-s-s " of its purpose. What is that purpose ? It is to 
keep America out of the concert of nations, in order that America 



112 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

and Germany, being out of that concert, may stand — in their mis- 
taken dream — united to dominate the world, or, at any rate, the one 
assist the other in holding the nations of the world off while its 
ambitions are realized. 

There is no conjecture about this, my fellow citizens. We know 
the former purposes of German intrigue in this country, and they are 
being revived. Why? We have not reduced very materially the num- 
ber of the German people. Germany remains the great power of central 
Europe. She has more than 60,000,000 people now (she had nearly 
70,000,000 before Poland and other Provinces were taken away). 
You can not change the temper and expectations of a people by five 
years of war, particularly five years of war in which they are not yet 
conscious of the wrong they did or of the wrong way in which they 
did it. They are expecting the time of the revival of their power, 
and along with the revival of their power goes their extraordinary 
capacity, their unparalleled education, their great capacity in com- 
merce and finance and manufacture. The German bankers and the 
German merchants and the German manufacturers did not want 
this war. They were making conquest of the world without it, and 
they knew it would spoil their plans, not advance them; and it 
has spoiled their plans, but they are there yet with their capacity, 
with their conception of what it is to serve the world materially and 
so subdue the world psychologically. All of that is still there, my 
fellow countrymen, and if America stays out then the rest of the 
world will have to watch Germany and watch America, and when 
there are two dissociated powers there is danger that they will have 
the same purposes. 

There can be only one intelligent reason for America staying out 
of this, and that is that she does not want peace, that she wants war 
sometimes and the advantage which war will bring her, and I want 
to say now and here that the men who think that by that thought 
they are interpreting America are making the sort of mistake upon 
which it will be useful for them to reflect in obscurity for the rest 
of their lives. This is a peaceful people. This is a liberty-loving 
people, and liberty is suffocated by war. Free institutions can not 
survive the strain of prolonged military administration. In order to 
live tolerable lives you must lift the fear of war and the practice of 
war from the lives of nations. America is evidence of the fact that 
no great democracy ever entered upon an aggressive international 
policy. I want you to know, if you will be kind enough to read the 
covenant of the league of nations — most of the people that are argu- 
ing against it are taking it for granted that you have never read it — 
take the pains to read it, and you will find that no nation is admitted 
to the league of nations that can not show that it has the institutions 
which we call free. Nobody is admitted except the self-governing 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 113 

nations, because it was the instinctive judgment of every man who sat 
around that board that only a nation whose government was its 
servant and not its master could be trusted to preserve the peace of 
the world. There are not going to be many other kinds of nations 
long, my fellow citizens. The people of this world — not merely the 
people of America, for they did the job long ago — have determined 
that there shall be no more autocratic governments. 

And in their haste to get rid of one of them they set up another. 
I mean in pitiful Russia. I wish we could learn the lesson of Russia 
so that it would be burned into the consciousness of every man and 
woman in America. That lesson is that nobody can be free where 
there is not public order and authority. What has happened in 
Russia is that an old and distinguished and skillful autocracy has 
had put in its place an amateur autocracy, a little handful of men 
exercising without the slightest compunction of mercy or pity the 
bloody terror that characterized the worst days of the Czar. That 
is what must happen if you knock things to pieces. Liberty is a thing 
of slow construction. Liberty is a thing of universal cooperation. 
Liberty is a thing which you must build up by habit. Liberty is 
a thing which is rooted and grounded in character, and the reason I 
am so certain that the leadership of the world, in respect of order 
and progress, belongs to America is that I know that these principles 
are rooted and grounded in the American character. It is not our 
intellectual capacity, my fellow-citizens, that has given us our place 
in the world, though I rate that as high as the intellectual capacity 
of any other people that ever lived, but it is the heart that lies back 
of the man that makes America. Ask this question of yourselves. 
I have no doubt that this room is full of mothers and fathers and 
wives and sweethearts who sent their beloved young men to France. 
What did you send them there for? What made you proud that 
they were going ? What made you willing that they should go ? Did 
you think they were seeking to aggrandize America in some way? 
Did you think the}^ were going to take something for America that 
had belonged to somebody else ? Did you think that they were going 
in a quarrel which they had provoked and must maintain? The 
question answers itself. You were proud that they should go because 
they were going on an errand of self-sacrifice, in the interest of man- 
kind. What a halo and glory surrounds those old men whom we now 
greet with such reverence, the men who were the soldiers in our Civil 
War ! They saved a Nation. Ah, when these youngsters grow old 
who have come back from the fields of France, what a halo will be 
around their brows ! They saved the world. They are of the same 
stuff as those old veterans of the Civil War. Mind you, I was born 
and bred in the South, but I can pay that tribute with all my heart 

141677— S. Doc. 120, 66-1 8 



114 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

to the men who saved the Union. It ought to have been saved. It 
was the greatest thing that men had conceived up to that time. Now 
we come to a greater thing — to the union of great nations in con- 
ference upon the interests of peace. That is the fruitage, the fine 
and appropriate fruitage, of what these men achieved upon the fields 
of France. 

I saw many fine sights in Paris, many gallant sights, many sights 
that quickened the pulse; but my pulse never beat so fast as when 
I saw groups of our boys swinging along the street. They looked as 
if they owned something, and they did. They owned the finest thing 
in the world, the thing that we are going to prove was theirs. They 
owned the ideals and conceptions that will govern the world. And 
on this errand that I am going about on I feel that I am doing what 
I can to complete what they so gallantly began. I should feel recre- 
ant, my fellow citizens, if I did not do all that is in my power to do 
to complete the ideal work which those youngsters so gallantly began. 

This was a war to make similar wars impossible, and merely to win 
this war and stop at that is to make it certain that we shall have to 
fight another and a final one. I hear opponents of the league of 
nations say, "But this does not guarantee peace." No; nothing 
guarantees us against human passion and error, but I would like to 
put this business proposition to you : If it increases the probability of 
peace by, let us say, 10 per cent, do you not think it is worth while ? 
In my judgment, it increases it about 99 per cent. Henceforth the 
genius of the world will be devoted to accommodating the counsels of 
mankind and not confusing them ; not supplying heat but supplying 
light; not putting friction into the machine, but easing the friction 
off and combining the parts of the great machinery of civilization 
so that they will run in smooth harmony and perfection. My fellow 
citizens, the tasks of peace that are ahead of us are the most difficult 
tasks to which the human genius has ever been devoted. I will state 
the fundamental task, for it is the fundamental task. It is the 
relationship between those who toil with their hands and those who 
direct that toil. I will not say the relationship between capital and 
labor; that means something slightly different. I say the relation- 
ship between those who organize enterprise and those who make 
enterprise go by the skill and labor of their hands. There is at 
present, to say the least, a most unsatisfactory relationship between 
those two and we must devote our national genius to working out a 
method of association between the two which will make this Nation 
the nation to solve triumphantly and for all time the fundamental 
problem of peaceful production. You ask, "What has that got to 
do with the league of nations ? " I dare say that you do not know 
because I have never heard anybody tell you that the great charter, 
the new international charter, of labor is in the treaty of peace and 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 115 

associated with the league of nations. A great machinery of consul- 
tation is set up there, not merely about international political affairs, 
but about standards of labor, about the relationships between man- 
agers and employees, about the standards of life and the conditions 
of labor, about the labor of women and of children, about the humane 
side and the business side of the whole labor problem. And the first 
conference is going to sit in Washington next month ; not the confer- 
ence which some of you may have- heard of, which I have just called 
of our own people, but an international conference to consider the 
interests of labor all over the round world. I do not know — nobody 
knows — whether the Senate will have stopped debating by that time 
or not. I heard a Member of the Senate say that nobody knew that 
except God Almighty ! But whether it has finished or not, the con- 
ference is going to sit, and if it has not finished, the only question 
that will be left unsettled is whether we are going to sit inside of it or 
outside of it. The conference at Paris voted, in their confidence in 
the American people, that the first meeting should be held in Wash- 
ington and should be called by the President of the United States. 
They supposed in their innocence that the President of the United 
States represented the people of the United States. And in calling 
this conference, as I have called it, I am confident that I am repre- 
senting the people of the United States. After I have bidden the 
delegates welcome, perhaps I can have a chair just outside the door 
and listen. 

I am jesting, my fellow citizens, but there is a little sadness in the 
jest, Why do we wait to do a great thing? Why do we wait to ful- 
fill the destiny of America? Wh}^ do we make it possible that any- 
body should think that we are not coming in now, but are going to 
wait later and come in with Germany ? I suppose there is a certain 
intellectual excitement and pleasure in debate, but I do not experience 
any when great issues like this are pending, and I would be very 
sad, indeed, if I did not have an absolute, unclouded confidence of 
the result. I had the great good fortune to be born an American, I 
have saturated myself in the traditions of our country, I have read 
all the great literature that interprets the spirit of our country, and 
when I read my own heart with regard to these great purposes, I 
feel confident that it is a sample American heart. Therefore I have 
the most unbounded confidence in the result. All that is needed is 
that you should be vocal and audible. I know what you want. Say 
it and get it. I am your servant ; all the men elected to go to Wash- 
ington are your servants. It is not our privilege to follow our pri- 
vate convictions; it is our duty to represent your convictions and 
execute your purposes, and therefore all that is needed is a conscious- 
ness. Tell me that you do not want to do what I am urging and I 



116 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

will go home; but tell me, as your faces and your voices tell me, 
that you do want what I want, and I will be heartened for the rest 
of my journey, and I will say to the folks all the way from here to 
the Pacific, " Minnesota is up and on her tiptoes and behind you. 
Let's all of us get in the great team which is to redeem the destinies 
of mankind." 

Our fathers of the revolutionary age had a vision, my fellow citi- 
zens. There were only 3,000,000 Americans then, in a little strip of 
settlements on the Atlantic coast. Now the great body of American 
citizens extends from ocean to ocean, more than a hundred millions 
strong. These are the people of whom the founders of the Republic 
were dreaming, those great hosts of free men and women who should 
come in the future and who should say to all the world, " Here are 
the testaments of liberty. Here are the principles of freedom. Here 
are the things which we must do in order that mankind may be re- 
leased from the intolerable things of the past." And there came a 
day at Paris when the representatives of all the great governments of 
the world accepted the American specifications upon which the terms 
of the treaty of peace were drawn. Shall we have our treaty, or shall 
we have somebody else's? Shall we keep the primacy of the world, 
or shall we abandon it? 



ADDRESS AT BISMARCK, N. DAK., 
SEPTEMBER 10, 1919. 



Goa\ Frazier, my fellow countrymen, I esteem it a great privilege 
to stand in your presence and to continue the discussion that I have 
been attempting in other parts of the country of the great matter 
which is pending for our determination. I say that it is pending for 
our determination, because, after all, it is a question for the thought- 
ful men and women of the United States. I believe that the gentle- 
men at Washington are trying to assess the opinion of the United 
States and are trying to embody and express it. 

It seems very strange from day to day as I go about that I should 
be discussing the question of peace. It seems very strange that after 
six months of conference in Paris, wdiere the minds of more than 20 
nations were brought together and where, after the most profound 
consideration of every question and every angle of every question con- 
cerned, an extraordinary agreement should have been reached — that 
while every other country concerned has stopped debating the 
peace, America is debating it. It seems very strange to me, my fel- 
low countrymen, because, as a matter of fact, we are debating the 
question of peace or war. There is only one way to have peace, and 
that is to have it by the concurrence of the minds of the world. 
America can not bring about peace by herself. No other nation can 
bring about peace by itself. The agreement of a small group of 
nations can not bring about peace. The world is not at peace. It is 
not, except in certain disturbed quarters, actually using military 
means of war, but the mind of the world is not at peace. The mind 
of the world is waiting for the verdict, and the verdict they are wait- 
ing for is this, Shall we have in the future the same dangers, the same 
suspicions, the same distractions, and shall we expect that out of 
those clangers and distractions armed conflict will arise ? Or shall we 
expect that the world will be willing to sit down at the council table 
to talk the thing over ; to delay all use of force until the world has 
had time to express its judgment upon the matter at issue? If that 
is not to be the solution, if the world is not to substitute discussion 
and arbitration for war, then the world is not now in a state of mind 
to have peace, even for the time being. While victory has been won, 
my fellow countrymen, it has been won only over the force of a par- 

117 



118 ADDKESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON.' 

ticular group of nations. It has not been won over the passions of 
those nations, or over the passions of the nations that were set against 
them. This treaty which I brought back with me is a great world 
settlement, and it tries to deal with some of the elements of passion 
which were likely at any time to blaze out in the world and which 
did blaze out and set the world on fire. 

The trouble was at the heart of Europe. At the heart of Europe 
there were suffering peoples, inarticulate but with hearts on fire 
against the iniquities practiced against them; held in the grip of 
military power and submitting to nothing but force; their spirits 
insurgent; and so long as that continued, there could not be the ex- 
, pectation of continued peace. This great settlement at Paris for the 
first time in the world considered the cry of the peoples and did not 
listen to the plea of governments. It did not listen to dynastic 
claims. It did not read over the whole story of rival territorial am- 
bitions. It said, " The day is closed for that. These lands belong to 
the stocks, the ancient stocks of people that live upon them, and we 
are going to give them to those people and say to them, 4 The land 
always should have been yours ; it is now yours, and you can govern 
it as you please.' " That is the principle that is at the heart of this 
treaty, but if that principle can not be maintained then there will 
ensue upon it the passion that dwelt in the hearts of those peoples, a 
despair which will bring about universal chaos. Men in despair do 
not construct governments. Men in despair destroy governments. 
Men whose whole affairs are so upset, whose whole systems of trans- 
portation are so disordered that they can not get food, that they can 
not get clothes, that they can not turn to any authority that can give 
them anything, run amuck. They do not stop to ask questions. I 
heard a very thoughtful pastor once preach a sermon which inter- 
ested me very deeply, on the sequence of the petitions in the Lord's 
Prayer. He called attention to the fact that the first petition was, 
" Give us this day our daily bread," and he pointed out that our 
Saviour probably knew better than anybody else that a man can not 
serve God or his fellow men on an empty stomach, that he has got to 
be physically sustained. When a man has got an empty stomach, 
most of all when those he loves are starving, he is not going to serve 
any government; he is going to serve himself by the quickest way 
he can find. 

You say, "What has this got to do with the adoption by the 
United States Senate of the treaty of peace ? " It has this to do with 
it, my fellow citizens, that the whole world is waiting upon us, and 
if we stay out of it, if we qualify our assent in any essential way, the 
world will say, " Then there can be no peace, for that great Nation 
in the west is the only makeweight which will hold these scales 
steady." I hear counsels of selfishness uttered. I hear men say, 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 119 

" Very well, let us stay out and take care of ourselves and let the rest 
of the world take care of itself." I do not agree with that from the 
point of view of sentiment. I would be ashamed to agree with it from 
the point of view of sentiment, and I think I have intelligence enough 
to know that it would not work, even if I wanted it to work. Are we 
disconnected from the rest of the world? Take a single item. If 
Europe if disordered, who is going to buy wheat? There is more 
wheat in this country than. we can consume. There is more food- 
stuffs in this country of many sorts than we can consume. There is 
no foreign market that anybody can count on wherein there is set- 
tled peace. Men are not going to buy until they know what is going 
to happen to-morrow, for the very good reason that they can not get 
any money ; they can not earn any money amidst a disordered organ- 
ization of industry and the absence of those processes of credit which 
keep business going. 

We have managed in the process of civilization, my fellow citizens, 
to make a world that can not be taken to pieces. The pieces are dove- 
tailed and intimately fitted with one another, and unless you assemble 
them as you do the intimate parts of a great machine, civilization will 
not work. I believe that, with the exception of the United States, 
there is not a country in the world that can live without importation. 
There are only one or two countries that can live without imported 
foodstuffs. There are no countries that I know of that can live in 
their ordinary way without importing manufactured goods or raw 
materials, raw materials of many kinds. Take that great kingdom, 
for example, for which I have the most intimate sympathy, the great 
Kingdom of Italy. There are no raw materials worth mentioning in 
Italy. There are great factories there, but they have to get all the 
raw materials that they manufacture from outside Italy. There is 
no coal in Italy, no fuel. They have to get all their coal from outside 
of Italy, and at the present moment because the world is holding its 
breath and waiting the great coal fields of Central Europe are not 
being worked except to about 40 per cent of their capacity. The 
coal in Silesia, the coal in Bohemia, is not being shipped out, and 
industries are checked and chilled and drawn in, and starvation comes 
nearer, unemployment becomes more and more universal. At this 
moment there is nothing brought to my attention more often at 
Washington than the necessity for shipping out our fuel and our raw 
materials to start the world again. If we do not start the world again, 
then we check and stop to that extent our own industries and our 
exportations, of course. You can not disentangle the United States 
from the rest of the world. If the rest of the world goes bankrupt, 
the business of the United States is in a way to be ruined. I do not 
like to put the thing upon this basis, my fellow citizens, because this is 
not the American basis. America was not founded to make money ; 



120 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

it was founded to lead the world on the way to liberty, and now, 
while we debate, all the rest of the world is saying, " Why does 
America hesitate ? We want to follow her. We shall not know which 
way to go unless she leads. We want the direction of her business 
genius. We want the suggestions of her principles, and she hesi- 
tates. She does not know whether she wants to go or not." Oh, yes, 
she does, my fellow citizens. Men among us do not know whether we 
want to go in or not, but we know. There is no more danger of 
America staying out of this great thing than there is of her reversing 
all the other processes of her history and forgetting all the principles 
that she has spilt so much precious blood to maintain. But, in the 
meantime, the delay is injuring the whole world and ourselves, of 
course, along with the rest, because we are a very big and, in my 
opinion, an extremely important part of the world. 

I have told many times, but I must tell you again, of the ex- 
perience that I had in Paris. Almost every day of the week that I 
was not imperatively engaged otherwise I was receiving delega- 
tions. Delegations from where? Not merely groups of men from 
France and other near-by regions, but groups of men from all over 
the world — as I have several times admitted, from some parts of 
the world that I never heard the names of before. I do not think 
they were in geography when I was at school. If they were, I had 
forgotten them. Did you ever hear of Adjur-Badjan, for example? 
A very dignified group of fine-looking men came in from Adjur- 
Badjan. I did not dare ask them where it was, but I looked it up 
secretely afterwards and found that it was a very prosperous valley 
region lying south of the Caucasus and that it had a great and 
ancient civilization. I knew from what these men said to me that 
they knew what they were .talking about, though I did not know 
anything about their affairs. They knew, above all things else, what 
America stood for, and they had come to me, figuratively speaking, 
with outstretched hands and said, " We want the guidance and the 
help and the advice of America." And they all said that, until my 
heart grew fearful, and I said to one group of them, " I beg that you 
will not expect the impossible. America can not do the things that 
you are asking her to do. We will do the best we can. We will 
stand as your friends. We will give you every sort of aid that we 
can give you, but please do not expect the impossible." They believe 
that America can work miracles merely by being America and 
asserting the principles of America throughout the globe, and that 
kind of assertion, my fellow citizens, is the process of peace; and 
that is the only possible process of peace. 

When I say, therefore, that I have come here this morning actually 
to discuss the question with you whether we shall have peace or war, 
you may say, " There is no war ; the war is over." The fighting is 



ADDRESSES OE PRESIDENT WILSON. 121 

over, but there is not peace, and there can not be peace without the 
assistance of America. The assistance of America comes just at the 
center of the whole thing that was planned in Paris. You have 
heard some men talk about separating the covenant of the league 
of nations from the treaty. I intended to bring a copy of the treaty 
with me ; it is a volume as thick as that, and the very first thing in 
it is the league of nations covenant. By common consent that was 
put first, because by common consent that is the only thing that will 
make the rest of the volume work. That was not the opinion at the 
beginning of the conference. There were a great many cynics on 
that side of the water who smiled indulgently when you spoke hope- 
fully of drawing the nations together in a common consent of action, 
but before we got through there was not a man who had not as a 
hard, practical judgment, come to the conclusion that we could not 
do without it, that you could not make a world settlement without 
setting up an organization that would see that it was carried out, and 
that } r ou could not compose the mind of the world unless that set- 
tlement included an arrangement by which discussion should be 
substituted for war. 

If the war that we have just had had been preceded by discussion, 
it never would have happened. Every foreign office in Europe urged 
through its minister at Berlin that no action should be taken until 
there should x be an international conference and the other govern- 
ments should learn what if any processes of mediation they might 
interpose. And Germany did not dare delay it for 24 hours. If she 
had, she never could have begun it. You dare not lay a bad case be- 
fore mankind. You dare not kill the young men of the world for a 
dishonest purpose. We have let thousands of our lads go to their 
death in order to convince, not Germany merely, but any other nation 
that may have in the back of its thought a similar enterprise, that the 
world does not mean to permit any inquity of that sort, and if it had 
been displayed as an iniquity in open conference for not less than 
nine months, as the covenant of the league of nations provides, it 
never could have happened. 

Your attention is called to certain features of this league — the only 
features to which your attention ever is called by those who are op- 
posed to it and you are left with the impression that it is an arrange- 
ment by which war is just on the hair trigger. You are constantly 
told about article 10. Now, article 10 has no operative force in it 
unless we vote that it shall operate. I will tell you what article 10 is ; 
I think I can repeat it almost verbatim. Under article 10 eAery 
member of the league undertakes to respect and preserve as against 
external aggression the territorial integrity and the existing political 
independence of the other members of the league. So far so good. 
The second sentence provides that in case of necessity the council of 



122 ADDKESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

the league shall advise what steps are necessary to carry out the ob- 
ligations of that promise; that is to say, what force is necessary if 
any. The council can not give that advice without a unanimous vote. 
It can not give the advice, therefore, without the affirmative vote of 
the United States, unless the United States is a party to the controversy 
in question. Let us see what that means. Do you think the United 
States is likely to seize somebody else's territory ? Do you think the 
United States is likely to disregard the first sentence of the article '1 
And if she is not likely to begin an aggression of that sort, who is 
likely to begin it against her? Is Mexico going to invade us and 
appropriate Texas ? Is Canada going to come down with her nine or 
ten millions and overwhelm the hundred millions of the United 
States? Who is going to grab territory, and, above all things else, 
who is going to entertain the idea if the rest of the world has said, 
" No ; we are all pledged to see that you do not do that." But sup- 
pose that somebody does attempt to grab our territory or that we do 
attempt to grab somebody else's territory. Then the war is ours 
anyhow. Then what difference does it make what advice the council 
gives ? Unless it is our war we can not be dragged into a war with- 
out our own consent. If that is not an open and shut security, I do 
not know of any. Yet that is article 10. 

I do not recognize this covenant when I hear some other men talk 
about it. I spent hours and hours in the presence of the representa- 
tives of 13 other Governments examining every sentence of it, up and 
down and crosswise, and trying to keep out of it anything that inter- 
fered with the essential sovereignty of any member of the league. I 
carried over with me in March all the suggestions made by the 
Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate, and they were all ac- 
cepted, and yet I come back and find that I do not understand what 
the document means. I am told that plain sentences which I thought 
were unmistakable English terms mean something that I never heard 
of and that nobody else ever intended as a purpose. But whatever 
you may think of article 10, my fellow citizens, it is the heart of the 
treaty. You have either got to take it or you have got to throw the 
world back into that old conquest over land titles, which would upset 
the State of North Dakota or any other part of the world. Suppose 
there were no guaranty of any land title in North Dakota ! I can 
fancy how every farmer and every man with a city lot would go 
armed. He would hire somebody, if he was too sleepy to sit up all 
night, to see that nobody trespassed and took squatter posssession of 
his unsecured land. We have been trying to do something analagous 
to that with the territories of Europe ; to fix the land titles, and then 
having fixed them, we have got to have article 10. Under article 
10 these titles are established, and we all join to guarantee their 
maintenance. There is no other way to quiet the world, and if the 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 123 

world is not quieted, then America is sooner or later involved in the 
melee. We boast, my fellow citizens — but we sometimes forget — 
what a powerful Nation the United States is. Do you suppose we 
can ask the other nations of the world to forget that we are out of the 
arrangement ? Do you suppose that we can stay out of the arrange- 
ment without being suspected and intrigued against and hated by 
all the rest of them. And do you think that is an advantageous 
basis for international transactions? Any way you take this ques- 
tion you are led straight around to this alternative, either this treaty 
with this covenant or a disturbed world and certain war. There is 
no escape from it. 

America recalls, I am sure, all the assurances that she has given to 
the world in the years past. Some of the very men who are now op- 
posing this covenant were the most eloquent advocates of an inter- 
national concert which would be carried to a point where the exercise 
of independent sovereignty would be almost estopped. They put it 
into measures of Congress. For example, in one, I believe the last, 
Navy appropriation bill, by unanimous vote of the committee, they 
put in the provision that after the building program had been au- 
thorized by Congress the President could cancel it if in the meantime 
he had been able to induce the other Governments of the world to set 
up an international tribunal which would settle international dif- 
ficulties. They actually had the matter so definitely in mind that 
they authorized the President not to carry out an act of Congress with 
regard to the building of great ships if he could get an arrangement 
similar to the arrangement which I have now laid before them, be- 
cause their instinctive judgment is, my instinctive judgment and 
yours is, that we have no choice, if we want to stop war, but to take 
the steps that are necessary to stop war. 

If we do not enter into this covenant, what is our situation ? Our 
situation is exactly the situation of Germany herself, except that we 
are not disarmed and Germany is disarmed. We have joined with 
the rest of the world to defeat the objects that Germany had in mind. 
We now do not even sign the treaty, let us suppose, that disarms Ger- 
many. She is disarmed, nevertheless, because the other nations will 
enter into the treaty, and there, planted in her heart, planted in the 
heart of those 60,000,000 people, is this sense of isolation ; it may be 
this sense that some day, by gathering force and change of circum- 
stances, they may have another chance, and the only other nation that 
they can look to is the United States. The United States has repu- 
diated the guaranty. The United States has said, "Yes; we sent 
2,000,000 men over there to accomplish this, but we do not like it now 
that we have accomplished it and we will not guarantee the conse- 
quences. We are going to stay in such a situation that some day we 
may send 2,000,000 more over there. We promised the mothers and 



124 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

fathers and the wives and the sweethearts that these men were fight- 
ing so that this thing should not happen again, but we are now to 
arrange it so that it may happen again." So the two nations that 
will stand and play a lone hand in the world would be Germany and 
the United States. 

I am not pointing this out to you, my fellow citizens, because I 
think it is going to happen. I know it is not. I am not in the least 
troubled about that; but I do want you to share fully with me the 
thought that I have brought back from Europe. I know what I am 
; talking about when I say that America is the only nation whose 
guaranty will suffice to substitute discussion for war, and I rejoice 
in the circumstance. I rejoice that the day has come when America 
can fulfill her destiny. Her destiny was expressed much more in her 
open doors, for she said to the oppressed all over the world, " Come 
and join us ; we will give you freedom ; we will give you opportunity ; 
we have no governments that can act as your masters. Come and join 
us to conduct the great government which is our own." And they 
came in thronging millions, and their genius was added to ours, 
their sturdy capacity multiplied and increased the capacity of the 
United States ; and now, with the blood of every great people in our 
veins, we turn to the rest of the world and say, " We still stand ready 
to redeem you. We still believe in liberty. We still mean to exercise 
every force that we have and, if need be, spend every dollar that is 
ours to vindicate the standards of justice and of right." 

It is a noble prospect. It is a noble opportunity. My pulses 
quicken at the thought of it. I am glad to have lived in a day when 
America can redeem her pledges to the world, when America can 
prove that her leadership is the leadership that leads out of these 
age-long troubles, these age-long miseries into which the world will 
not sink back, but which, without our assistance, it may struggle out 
of only through a long period of bloody revolution. The peoples of 
Europe are in a revolutionary frame of mind. They do not believe 
in the things that have been practiced upon them in the past, and 
they mean to have new things practiced. In the meantime they are, 
some of them, like pitiful Russia, in danger of doing a most extraor- 
dinary thing, substituting one kind of autocracy for another. Russia 
repudiated the Czar, who was cruel at times, and set up her present 
masters, who are cruel all the time and pity nobody, who seize every- 
body's property and feed only the soldiers that are fighting for them ; 
and now, according to the papers, they are likely to brand every one 
of those soldiers so that he may not easily, at any rate, escape their 
clutches and desert. Branding their servants and making slaves of 
a great and lovable people ! There is no people in the world fuller 
of the naive sentiments of good will and of fellowship than the 
people of Russia, and they are in the grip of a cruel autocracy that 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 125 

dare not, though challenged by every friendly Government in 
Europe, assemble a constituency ; they dare not appeal to the people. 
They know that their mastery would end the minute the people took 
charge of their own affairs. 

Do not let us expose any of the rest of the world to the necessity 
of going through any such terrible experience as that, my fellow 
countrymen. We are at present helpless to assist Russia, because 
there are no responsible channels through which we can assist her. 
Our heart goes out to her, but the world is disordered, and while it 
is disordered — we debate ! 



ADDRESS FROM REAR PLATFORM, MANDAN, N. DAK., 

SEPTEMBER 10, 1919. 



I am glad to get out to see the real folks, to feel the touch of their 
hand, and. know, as I have come to know, how the Nation stands to- 
gether in the common purpose to complete what the boys did who 
carried their guns with them over the sea. We may think that they 
finished that job, but they will tell you they did not; that unless we 
see to it that peace is made secure, they will have the job to do over 
again, and we in the meantime will rest under a constant apprehen- 
sion that we may have to sacrifice the flower of our youth again. 
The whole country has made up its mind that that shall not happen ; 
and presently, after a reasonable time is allowed for unnecessary de- 
bate, we will get out of all this period of doubt and unite the whole 
force and influence of the United States to steady the world in the 
lines of peace. It will be the proudest thing and finest thing that 
America ever did. She was born to do these things, and now she is 
going to do them. 

I am very much obliged to you for coming out. 

127 



ADDRESS AT AUDITORIUM, BILLINGS, MONT., 

SEPTEMBER 11, 1919. 



Mr. Mayor, Judge Pierson, my fellow countrymen, it is with 
genuine pleasure that I face this company and realize that I am in the 
great State of Montana. I have long wanted to visit this great 
State and come into contact with its free and vigorous population, 
and I want to thank Judge Pierson for the happy word that he 
used in speaking of my errand. He said that I had come to consult 
with you. That is exactly what I have come to do. I have come to 
consult with you in the light of certain circumstances which I want 
to explain to you, circumstances which affect not only this great 
Nation which we love, and of which we try to constitute an honor- 
able part, but also affect the whole world. I wonder when we speak 
of the whole world whether we have a true conception of the fact 
that the human heart beats everywhere the same. Nothing impressed 
me so much on the other side of the water as the sort of longing for 
sympathy which those people exhibited. The people of France, for 
example, feeling keenly as they do the terrors that they have suffered 
at the hands of the enemy, are never so happy as when they realize 
that we across the sea at a great distance feel with them the keen 
arrows of sorrow that have penetrated their hearts and are glad 
that our boys went over there to help rescue them from the terror 
that lay upon them day and night. 

What I have come to say to you to-day, my friends, is this : We 
are debating the treaty of peace with Germany and we are making 
the mistake, I take the liberty of saying, of debating it as if it were 
an ordinary treaty with some particular country, a treaty which we 
could ourselves modify without complicating the affairs of the 
world ; whereas, as a matter of fact, this is not merely a treaty with 
Germany. Matters were drawn into this treaty which affected the 
peace and happiness of the whole Continent of Europe, and not of 
the Continent of Europe merely, but of forlorn populations in 
Africa, of peoples that we hardly know about in Asia, in the Far 
East and everywhere the influence of German policy had extended 
and everywhere that influence had to be corrected, had to be checked, 
had to be altered. What I want to impress upon you to-day is that 
141677— S. Doc. 120, 66-1 9 129 



130 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

it is this treaty or none. It is this treaty because we can have no 
other. 

Consider the circumstances. For the first time in the world some 
20 nations sent their most thoughtful and responsible men to consult 
together at the capital of France to effect a settlement of the affairs 
of the world, and I want to render my testimony that these gentle- 
men entered upon their deliberations with great openness of mind. 
Their discussions were characterized by the utmost candor, and they 
realize, my fellow citizens, what as a student of history I venture 
to say no similar body ever acknowledged before, that they were 
nobody's masters, that they did not have the right to follow the line 
of any national advantage in determining what the settlements of 
the peace should be, but that they were the servants of their people 
and the servants of the people of the world. This settlement, my 
fellow citizens, is the first international settlement that was intended 
for the happiness of the average men and women throughout the 
World. This is indeed and in truth a people's treaty, and it is the 
first people's treaty, and I venture to express the opinion that it is 
not wise for Parliaments or Congresses to attempt to alter it. It 
is a people's treaty, notwithstanding the fact that we call it a treaty 
J with Germany ; and while it is a treaty with Germany, and in some 
senses a very severe treaty, indeed, it is not an unjust treaty, as some 
have characterized it. My fellow citizens, Germany tried to com- 
mit a crime against civilization, and this treaty is justified in making 
Germany pay for that criminal error up to the ability of her pay- 
ment. Some of the very gentlemen who are now characterizing this 
treaty as too harsh are the same men who less than a twelvemonth 
ago were criticizing the administration at Washington in the fear 
that they would compound with Germany and let her off from the 
payment of the utmost that she could pay in retribution for what 
she had done. They were pitiless then; they are pitiful now. 

It is very important, my fellow citizens, that we should not forget 
what this war meant. I am amazed at the indications that we are 
forgetting what we went through. There are some indications 
that on the other side of the water they are apt to forget what they 
went through. I venture to think that there are thousands of mothers 
and fathers and wives and sisters and sweethearts in this country 
who are never going to forget. Thousands of our gallant youth lie 
buried in France, and buried for what? For the redemption of 
America? America was not directly attacked. For the salvation 
of America? America was not immediately in danger. No; for 
the salvation of mankind. It is the noblest errand that troops ever 
went on. I was saying the other day in the presence of a little 
handful of men whom I revered, veterans of our Civil War, that 
it seemed to me that they fought for the greatest thing that there 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSOX. 131 

was to fight for in their day, and you know with what reverence 
Ave have regarded all the men who fought in the ranks in the Civil 
War for the Union. I am saying this out of a full heart, though I 
was born on the other side of the Mason and Dixon line. We re- 
vere the men who saved the Union. What are going to be our senti- 
ments with regard to these boys in khaki and the boys who have 
just been in khaki in this war? Do you not think that when they 
are old men a halo will seem to be about them, because they were 
crusaders for the liberty of the world? One of the hardest things 
for me to do during this war, as for many another man in this 
country, was merely to try to direct things and not take a gun and 
go myself. When I feel the pride that I often have felt in having- 
been the Commander in Chief of these gallant armies and those 
splendid boys at sea, I think, "Ah, that is fine, but, oh, to have been 
one of them and to have accomplished this great thing which has 
been accomplished ! " 

The fundamental principle of this treaty is a principle never 
acknowledged before, a principle Avhich had its birth and has had 
its growth in this country, that the countries of the world belong to 
the people who live in them, and that they have a right to determine 
their own destiny and their own form of government and their own 
polic}', and that no body of statesmen, sitting anywhere, no matter 
whether they represent the overwhelming physical force of the world 
or not, has the right to assign any great people to a sovereignty under 
which it does not care to live. This is the great treaty which is being 
debated. This is the treaty which is being examined with a micro- 
scope. This is the treaty which is being pulled about and about 
which suggestions are made as to changes of phraseology. Why, my 
friends, are you going to be so nearsighted as to look that way at a 
great charter of human liberty ? The thing is impossible. You can 
not have any other treaty, because you can never get together again 
the elements that agreed to this treaty. You can not do it by dealing 
with separate governments. You can not assemble the forces again 
that were back of it. You can not bring the agreement upon which 
it rests into force again. It was the laborious work of many, many 
months of the most intimate conference. It has ver}^, very few com- 
promises in it and is, most of it, laid down in straight lines according 
to American specifications. The choice is either to accept this treaty 
or play a lone hand. What does that mean? To play a lone hand 
means that we must always be ready to play by ourselves. That 
means that we must always be armed, that we must always be ready 
to mobilize the man strength and the manufacturing resources of the 
country ; it means that we must continue to live under not diminishing 
but increasing taxes ; it means that we shall devote our thought and 
the organization of our Government to being strong enough to beat 



132 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

any nation in the world. An absolute reversal of all the ideals of 
American history. If you are going to play a lone hand, the hand 
that you play must be upon the handle of the sword. You can not 
play a lone hand and do your civil business except with the other 
hand — one hand incidental for the business of peace, the other hand 
constantly for the assertion of force. It is either this treaty or a lone 
hand, and the lone hand must have a weapon in it. The weapon 
must be all the young men of the country trained to arms, and the 
business of the country must pay the piper, must pay for the whole 
armament, the arms and the men. That is the choice. Do you sup- 
pose, my fellow citizens, that any nation is going to stand for that? 
We are not the only people who are sick of war. We are not the only 
people who have made up our minds that our Government must 
devote its attention to peace and to justice and to right. The people 
all over the world have made up their minds as to that. We need 
peace more than we ever needed it before. We need ordered peace, calm 
peace, settled peace, assured peace — for what have we to do? We 
liave to reregulate the fortunes of men. We have to reconstruct the 
machinery of civilization. I use the words deliberately — we have to 
reconstruct the machinery of civilization. 

The central fact of the modern world is universal unrest, and the 
unrest is not due merely to the excitement of a recent war. The un- 
rest is not due merely to the fact of recent extraordinary circum- 
stances. It is due to a universal conviction that the conditions under 
which men live and labor are not satisfactory. It is a conviction all 
over the world that there is no use talking about political democracy 
unless you have also industrial democracy. You know what this war 
interrupted in the United States. We were searching our own hearts ; 
we were looking closely at our own methods of doing business. A 
great many were convinced that the control of the business of this 
country was in too few hands. Some were convinced that the credit 
of the country was controlled by small groups of men, and the great 
Federal reserve act and the great land-bank act were passed in order 
to release the resources of the country on a broader and more gen- 
erous scale. We had not finished dealing with monopolies. We have 
not finished dealing with monopolies. With monopolies there can be 
no industrial democracy. With the control of the few, of whatever 
kind or class, there can be no democracy of any sort. The world is 
finding that out in some portions of it in blood and terror. 

Look what has happened in Russia, my fellow citizens. I find 
wherever I go in America that my fellow citizens feel as I do, an 
infinite pity for that great people, an infinite longing to be of some 
service to them. Everybody who has mixed with the Russian people 
tells me that they are among the most lovable people in the world, a 
very gentle people, a very friendly people, a very simple people, and 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 133 

in their local life a very democratic people, people who easly trust 
you, and who expect you to be trustworthy as they are. Yet this 
people is delivered into the hands of an intolerable tyranny. It came 
out of one tyranny to get into a worse. A little group of some 30 or 40 
men are the masters of that people at present. Nobody elected them. 
They chose themselves. They maintain their power by the sword, and 
they maintain the sword by seizing all the food of the country and let- 
ting only those who will fight for them eat, the rest of them to go 
starved ; and because they can command no loyalty we are told by the 
newspapers that they are about to brand the men under arms for 
them, so that they will be forever marked as their servants and slaves. 
That is what pitiful Russia has got in for, and there will be many a 
bloody year, I am afraid, before she finds herself again. 

I speak of Russia. Have you seen no symptoms of the spread of 
that sort of chaotic spirit into other countries? If you had been 
across the sea with me you would know that the dread in the mind: 
of every thoughtful man in Europe is that that distemper will spread 
to their countries, that before there will be settled order there will be 
tragical disorder. Have you heard nothing of the propaganda of 
that sort of belief in the United States? That poison is running 
through the veins of the Avorld, and we have made the methods of 
communication throughout the world such that all the veins of the 
world are open and the poison can circulate. The wireless throws it 
out upon the air. The cable whispers it underneath the sea. Men 
talk about it in little groups, men talk about it openly in great groups 
not only in Europe but here also in the United States. There are 
apostles of Lenin in our own midst. I can not imagine what it means 
to be an apostle of Lenin. It means to be an apostle of the night, 
of chaos, of disorder ; there can be no creed of disorganization. Our 
immediate duty, therefore, my fellow countrymen, is to see that no 
minority, no class, no special interest, no matter how respectable, how 
rich, how poor, shall get control of the affairs of the United States. 

The singular thing about the sort of disorder that prevails in 
Russia is that while every man is, so to say, invited to take what he 
can get, he can not keep it when he gets it, because, even if you had 
leave to steal, which is the leave very generously given in Russia at 
present, you have got to get somebody to help you to keep what you 
steal. Without organization you can not get any help, so the only 
thing }^ou can do is to dig a hole and find a cave somewhere. Dis- 
ordered society is dissolved society. There is no society when there is 
not settled and calculable order. When you do not know what is 
going to happen to you to-morrow, you do not much care what is 
going to happen to you to-da}^. These are the things that confront 
us. The world must be satisfied of justice. The conditions of civilized 
life must be purified and perfected, and if we do not have peace, that 



134 ADDEESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

is impossible. We must clear the decks of tliis matter we are now 
discussing. This is the best treaty that can possibly be got, and, in 
my judgment, it is a mighty good treaty, for it lias justice, the attempt 
at justice at any rate, at the heart of it. 

Suppose that you were feeling that there was a danger of a general 
conflagration in your part of the country ; I mean a literal fire. Which 
would you rather have, no insurance at all or 10 per cent insurance ? 
Don't you think some insurance is better than none at all ? Put the 
security obtained by this treaty at its minimum, and it is a great deal 
better than no security at all, and without it there is no security at all, 
and no man can be sure what his business will be from month to 
month, or what his life will be from year to year. The leisureliness of 
some debates creates the impression on my mind that some men think 
there is leisure. There is no leisure in the world, my fellow citizens, 
with regard to the reform of the conditions under which men live. 
There is no time for any talk, but get down to the business of what 
we are going to do. 

I dare say that many of you know that I have called a conference to 
sit in Washington the first of next month, a conference of men in the 
habit of managing business and of men engaged in manual labor, what 
we generally call employers and employees. I have called them together 
for the sake of getting their minds together, getting their purposes to- 
gether, getting them to look at the picture of our life at the same time 
and in the same light and from the same angles, so that they can see 
the things that ought to be done. I am trying to apply there what is 
applied in' the great covenant of the league of nations, that if there is 
any trouble, the thing to do is not to fight, but to sit around the table 
and talk it over. The league of nations substitutes discussion for fight, 
and without discussion there will be fight. One of the greatest difficul- 
ties that we have been through in the past is in getting men to under- 
stand that fundamental thing. There is a very interesting story and a 
very charming story told of a great English writer of a past genera- 
tion. He was a, man who stuttered a little bit, and he stuttered out 
some very acid comment on some man who was not present. One of 
his friends said, "Why, Charles, I didn't know you kneAV him." a Oh, 
n-n-no," he said, "I-I d-d-don't k-know him; I-I c-c-can't hate a 
m-man I-I know." How much truth there is in that, my fellow coun- 
trymen ! You can not hate a fellow you know. I know some crooks 
that I can not help liking. I can judge them in cool blood and cor- 
rectly only when they are not there. They are extremely fetching and 
attractive fellows ; indeed, I suspect that a disagreeable fellow can not 
be a successful crook. 

But, to speak seriously, conference is the healing influence of civili- 
zation, and the real difficulty between classes, when a country is unfor- 
tunate enough to have classes, is that they do not understand one 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON". 135 

another. I sometimes think that the real barriers in life are the bar- 
riers of taste,, that some people like one way of doing things and that 
other people do not like that way of doing things; that one sort of 
people are not comfortable unless the people they are with are dressed 
the way they are. I thiols that goes so much deeper than people 
realize. It is the absence of the ability to get at the point of view and 
look through the eyes of the persons with whom you are not accus- 
tomed to deal. In order, therefore, to straighten out the affairs of 
America, in order to calm and correct the ways of the world, the first 
and immediate requisite is peace, and it is an immediate requisite. 
We can not wait. It is not wise to wait, because we ought to devote 
our best thoughts, the best impulses of our hearts, the clearest think- 
ing of our brain, to correcting the things that are wrong everywhere. 

I have been told, my fellow citizens, that this western part of the 
country is particularly prevaded with what is called radicalism. 
There is only one way to meet radicalism and that is to deprive it of 
food, and wherever there is anything wrong there is abundant food 
for radicalism. The only way to keep men from agitating against 
grievances is to remove the grievances, and as long as things are 
wrong I do. not intend to ask men to stop agitating. I intend to beg 
that they will agitate in an orderly fashion; I intend to beg 
that they will use the orderly methods of counsel, and, it may be, 
the slow processes of correction which can be accomplished in a self- 
governing people through political means. Otherwise we will have 
chaos ; but as long as there is something to correct, I say Godspeed to 
the men who are trying to correct it. That is the only way to meet 
radicalism. Radicalism means cutting up by the roots. Well, 
remove the noxious growth and there will be no cutting up by the 
roots. Then there will be the wholesome fruitage of an honest life 
from one end of this country to the other. 

In looking over some papers the other day I was reminded of a 
very interesting thing. The difficulty which is being found with the 
league of nations is that apparently the gentlemen who are discussing 
it unfavorably are afraid that we will be bound to do something we 
do not want to do. The only way in which you can have impartial 
determinations to this world is by consenting to something you do 
not want to do. Every time you have a case in court one or the other 
of the parties has to consent to do something he does riot want to do. 
There is not a case in court, and there are hundreds of thousands of 
them every year, in which one of the parties is not disappointed. 
Yet we regard that as the foundation of civilization, that we will not 
fight about these things, and that when we lose in court we will take 
our medicine. Very well; I say that the two Houses of Congress 
suggested that there be an international court, and suggested that 
they were willing to take their medicine. They put it in a place 



136 ADDKESSES OF PEESIDENT WILSON. 

where you would not expect it. They put it in the naval appropria- 
tion bill, and, not satisfied with putting it there once, they put it 
there several times ; I mean in successive years. This is the sum of it : 

" It is hereby declared to be the policy of the United States to 
adjust and settle its international disputes through mediation or 
arbitration (that is, the league of nations), to the end that war may 
be honorably avoided. It looks with apprehension and disfavor upon 
a general increase of armament throughout the world, but it realizes 
that no single nation can disarm and that without a common agree- 
ment upon the subject every considerable power must maintain a 
relative standing in military strength. In view of the premises, the 
President is authorized and requested to invite at an appropriate 
time, not later than the close of the war in Europe (this immediately 
preceded our entry into the war), all the great Governments of the 
world to send representatives to a conference which shall be charged 
with the duty of formulating a plan for a court of arbitration or 
other tribunal to which disputed questions between nations shall be 
referred for adjustment and peaceful settlement, and to consider the 
question of disarmament and submit their recommendations to their 
respective Governments for approval. The President is hereby 
authorized to appoint," etc. A provision for an appropriation to 
pay the expenses is also embodied. 

Now that they have got it, they do not like it. They also provided 
in this legislation that if there could be such an assemblage, if there 
could be such an agreement, the President was authorized to cancel the 
naval building program authorized by the bill, or so much of it as he 
thought was wise in the circumstances. They looked forward to it 
with such a practical eye that they contemplated the possibility of its 
coming soon enough to stop the building program of that bill. It 
came much sooner than they expected, and apparently has taken them 
so much by surprise as to confuse their minds. I suppose that this 
would be a very dull world if everybody were consistent, but con- 
sistency, my fellow citizens, in the sober, fundamental, underlying 
principles of civilization is a very serious thing indeed. 

If we are, indeed, headed toward peace with the real purpose of 
our hearts engaged, then we must take the necessary steps to secure it, 
and we must make the necessary sacrifices to secure it. I repudiate the 
suggestion which underlies some of the suggestions I have heard that 
the other nations of the world are acting in bad faith and that only 
the United States is acting in good faith. It is not true. I can testify 
that I was cooperating with honorable men on the other side of the 
water, and I challenge anybody to show where in recent years, while 
the opinion of mankind has been effective, there has been the repudi- 
ation of an international obligation by France or Italy or Great 
Britain or by Japan. Japan has kept her engagements, and Japan 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 137 

here engages to unite with the rest of the world in maintaining justice 
and a peace based upon justice. There can be cited no instances where 
these Governments have been dishonorable, and I need not add that 
there is, of course, no instance where the United States has not kept 
faith. 

When gentlemen discuss the right to withdraw from the league of 
nations and look suspiciously upon the clause which says that we can 
withdraw upon two years' notice, if at that time we have fulfilled our 
international obligations, I am inclined to ask, " What are you worried 
about? Are you afraid that we will not have fulfilled our interna- 
tional obligations?" I am too proud an American to believe anything 
of the kind. We never have failed to fulfill our international obliga- 
tions, and we never will, and our international obligations will always 
look toward the fulfillment of the highest purposes of civilization. 
When we came into existence as a Nation we promised ourselves and 
promised the world that we would serve liberty everywhere. We were 
only 3,000,000 strong then, and shall we, when more than a hundred 
million strong, fail to fulfill the promise that we made when we were 
weak? We have served mankind and we shall continue to serve man- 
kind, for I believe, my fellow men, that we are the flower of mankind 
so far as civilization is concerned. 

Please do not let me leave the impression on your mind that I am 
arguing with you. I am not arguing this case; I am merely ex- 
pounding it. I am just as sure what the verdict of this Nation is 
going to be as if it had been already rendered, and what has touched 
me and convinced me of this, my fellow citizens, is not what big 
men have told me, not what men of large affairs have said to me — I 
value their counsel and seek to be guided by it — but by what plain 
people have said to me, particularly by what women have said to me. 
When I see a woman plainly dressed, with the marks of labor upon 
her, and she takes my hand and says, " God bless you, Mr. President ; 
God bless the league of nations," I know that the league of nations 
has gone to the heart of this people. A woman came up to me the 
other day and grasped my hand and said, " God bless you ! " and 
then turned away in tears. I asked a neighbor, " What is the 
matter?" and he said, "She intended to say something to you, sir, 
but she lost a son in France." That woman did not take my hand 
with a feeling that her son ought not to have been sent to France. 
I sent her son to .France, and she took my hand and blessed me, but 
she could not say anything more, because the whole well of spirit in 
her came up into her throat and the thing was unutterable. Down 
deep in it was the love of her boy, the feeling of what he had done, 
the justice and the dignity and the majesty of it, and then the hope 
that through such poor instrumentality as men like myself could 



138 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

offer no other woman's son would ever be called upon to lay his life 
down for the same thing. I tell you, my fellow citizens, the whole 
world is now in the state where you can fancy that there are hot tears 
upon every cheek, and those hot tears are tears of sorrow. They are 
also tears of hope. It is amazing how, through all the sorrows of 
mankind and all the unspeakable terrors and injustices that have 
been inflicted upon men, hope springs eternal in the human heart. 
God knows that men, and governments in particular, have done 
everything they knew how to kill hope in the human heart, but it has 
not died. It is the one conquering force in the history of mankind. 
What I am pleading for, therefore — not with you, for I anticipate 
your verdict — but what I am pleading for with the Senate of the 
United States is to be done with debate and release and satisfy the 
hope of the world. 



ADDRESS AT OPERA HOUSE, HELENA, MONT., 

SEPTEMBER 11, 1919. 



Gov. Stewart and 1113^ fellow countrymen: I very heartily echo 
what Gov. Stewart has just said. I am very glad that an occasion 
has arisen which has given me the opportunity and the pleasure of 
coming thus face to face with, at any rate, some of the people of the 
great State of Montana. I must hasten to say to you that I am 
not come from Washington so much to advise you as to get in touch 
with you, as to get the feeling of the purposes which are moving you, 
because, my fellow citizens, I may tell you as a secret that some 
people in Washington lose that touch. They do not know what 
the purposes are that are running through the hearts and minds 
of the people of this great country, and after one stays in Wash- 
ington too long one is apt to catch that same remove and numbness 
which seems to characterize others that are there. I like to come 
out and feel once more the thing that is the only real thing in public 
affairs, and that is the great movement of public opinion in the 
United States. 

I want to put the case very simply to you to-night, for with all 
its complexity, with all the many aspects which it wears there is a 
very simple question at the heart of it. That question is nothing more 
nor less than this : Shall the great sacrifice that we made in this war 
be in vain, or shall it not ? I want to say to you very solemnly that, 
notwithstanding the splendid achievement of our soldiers on the 
other side of the sea, who I do not hesitate to say saved the world, 
notwithstanding the noble things that they did, their task is only half 
done and it remains for us to complete it. I want to explain that to 
you. I want to explain to you why, if we left the thing where it is 
and did not carry out the program of the treaty of peace in all its 
fullness, men like these would have to die again to do the work over 
again and convince provincial statesmen that the world is one and 
that only by organization of the world can you save the young men of 
the world. 

As I take up this theme there is a picture very distinct in my mind. 
Last Memorial Day I stood in an American cemetery in France just 
outside Paris, on the slopes of Surenes. The hills slope steeply to a 
little plain, and when I went out there all the slope of the hill was 

139 



140 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSOjST. 

covered with men in the American uniform, standing, but rising tier 
on tier as if in a great witness stand. Then below, all over this little 
level space, were the simple crosses that marked the resting place of 
American dead. Just by the stand where I spoke was a group of 
French women who had lost their own sons, but, just because they 
had lost their own sons and because their hearts went out in thought 
and sympathy to the mothers oil this side of the sea, had made them- 
selves, so to say, mothers of those graves, had every day gone to take 
care of them, had every day strewn them with flowers. They stood 
there, their cheeks wetted with tears, while I spoke, not of the French 
dead but of the American boys who had died in the common cause, 
and there seemed to me to be drawn together on that day and in that 
little sunny spot the hearts of the world. I took occasion to say on 
that day that those who stood in the way of completing the task 
that those men had died for would some day look back upon it as 
those have looked back upon the days when they tried to divide 
this Union and prevent it from being a single Nation united in a 
single form of liberty. For the completion of the work of those men 
is this, that the thing that they fought to stop shall never be at- 
tempted again. 

I call you to mind that we did not go into this war willingly. I 
was in a position to know ; in the providence of God, the leadership 
of this Nation was intrusted to me during those early years of the 
war when we were not in it. I was aware through many subtle 
channels of the movements of opinion in this country, and I know 
that the thing that this country chiefly desired, the thing that you 
men out here in the West chiefly desired and the thing that of course 
every loving woman had at her heart, was that we should keep out 
of the war, and we tried to persuade ourselves that the European 
business was not our business. We tried to convince ourselves that 
no matter what happened on the other side of the sea, no obligation 
of duty rested upon us, and finally we found the currents of humanity 
too strong for us. We found that a great consciousness was welling 
up in us that this was not a local cause, that this was not a struggle 
which was to be confined to Europe, or confined to Asia, to which it 
had spread, but that it was something that involved the very fate of 
civilization ; and there was one great Nation in the world that could 
not afford to stay out of it. There are gentlemen opposing the rati- 
fication of this treaty who at that time taunted the administration 
of the United States that it had lost touch with its international con- 
science. They were eager to go in, and now that they have got in, 
and are caught in the whole network of human conscience, they want 
to break out and stay out. We were caught in this thing by the action 
of a nation utterly unlike ourselves. What I mean to say is that the 
German nation, the German people, had no choice whatever as to 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 141 

whether it was to go into that war or not, did not know that it was 
going into it until its men were summoned to the colors. I remember, 
not once, but often, sitting at the Cabinet table in Washington I asked 
my colleagues what their impression was of the opinion of the coun- 
try before we went into the war, and I remember one day one of my 
colleagues said to me, " Mr. President, I think the people of the 
country would take your advice and do what you suggested." 
" Why," I said, " that is not what I am waiting for ; that is not 
enough. If they can not go in with, a whoop, there is no use of their 
going in at all. I do not want them to wait on me. I am waiting on 
them. I want to know what the conscience of this country is speak- 
ing. I want to know what the purpose is arising in the minds of the 
people of this country with regard to this world situation." When 
I thought I heard that voice, it was then that I proposed to the Con- 
gress of the United States that we should include ourselves in the 
challenge that Germany was giving to mankind. 

We fought Germany in order that there should be a world fit to 
live in. The world is not fit to live in, my fellow citizens, if any 
great government is in a position to do what the German Government 
did — secretly plot a war and begin it with the whole strength of its 
people, without so much as consulting its own people. A great war 
can not begin with public deliberation. A great war can begin only 
by private plot, because the peoples of this world are not asleep, as 
they used to be. The German people is a great educated people. All 
the thoughtful men in Germany, so far as I have been able to learn, 
who were following peaceful pursuits — the bankers and the mer- 
chants and the manufacturers — deemed it folly to go into that war. 
They said so then and they have said so since, but they were not 
consulted. The masters of Germany were the general military staff; 
it was these men who nearly brought a complete cataclysm upon 
civilization itself. It stands to reason that if we permit anything 
of that sort to happen again we are recreant to the men we sent across 
the seas to fight this war. We are deliberately guilty then of pre- 
paring a situation which will inevitably lead to what? What shall 
I call it? The final war? Alas, my fellow citizens, it might be the 
final arrest, though I pray only the temporary arrest, of civilization 
itself; and America has, if I may take the liberty of saying so, a 
greater interest in the prevention of that war than any other nation. 
America is less exhausted by the recent war than the other bellig- 
erents; she is not exhausted at all. America has paid for the war 
that has gone by less heavily, in proportion to her wealth, than the 
other nations. America still has free capital enough for its own 
industries and for the industries of the other countries that have to 
build their industries anew. The next war would have to be paid 
for in American blood and American money. The nation of all 



142 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

nations that is most interested to prevent the recurrence of what has 
already happened is the nation which would assuredly have to bear 
the brunt of that great catastrophe — either have to bear it or stop 
where we are. Who is going to check the growth of this Nation? 
Who is going to check the accumulation of physical power by this 
Nation — if you choose to put it in that form? Who is going to 
reduce the natural resources of this country? Who is going to 
change the circumstance that we largely feed the rest of the world? 
W r ho is going to change the circumstance that many of our resources 
are unique and indispensable? America is going to grow more and 
more powerful; and the more powerful she is the more inevitable 
it is that she should be trustee for the peace of the world. 

A miracle has happened. I dare say that many of you have in 
mind the very short course of American history. You know, when 
this Nation was born and we were just a little group — 3,000,000 peo- 
ple on the Atlantic coast — how the nations on the other side of the 
water and the statesmen of that day watched us with a certain con- 
descension, looked upon us as a sort of group of hopeful children, 
pleased for the time being with the conception of absolute freedom 
and political liberty, far in advance of the other peoples of the world 
because less experienced than they, less aware of the difficulties of 
the great task that they had accomplished. As the years have gone 
by they have watched the growth of this Nation with astonishment 
and for a long time with dismay. They watched it with dismay 
until a very interesting and significant thing happened. When we 
fought Cuba's battle for her, then they said, " Ah, it is the beginning 
of what we predicted. She will seize Cuba and, after Cuba, what 
she pleases to the south of her. It is the beginning of the history we 
have gone through ourselves." They ought to have known ; they set 
us the example ! When we actually fulfilled to the letter our promise 
that we would set helpless Cuba up as an independent government 
and guarantee her independence — when we carried out that great 
policy we astounded and converted the world. Then began — let me 
repeat the word again — then began the confidence of the world in 
America, and I want to testify to you to-night that nothing was more 
overpowering to me and my colleagues in Paris than the evidences 
of the absolutely unquestioning confidence of the peoples of the world 
in the people of America. We were touched by it not onty, but I 
must admit we were frightened by it, because we knew that they 
were expecting things of us that we could not accomplish ; we knew 
that they were hoping for some miracle of justice which would set 
them forward the same hundred years that we have traveled on the 
progress toward free government; and we knew that it was a slow 
j'oacl; we knew that you could not suddenly transform a people from 
a people of subjects into a people of self-governing units. And I 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 143 

perhaps returned a little bit to my own profession of teaching and 
tried to point out to them that some of the things they were expecting 
of us could not be done now; but they refused to be disabused of 
their absolute confidence that America could and would do anything 
that was right for the other peoples of the world. An amazing 
thing! What was more interesting still, my fellow citizens, was 
this : It happened that America laid down the specifications for the 
peace. It happened that America proposed the principles upon 
which the peace with Germany should be built. I use the word 
" happened " because I have found, and everybody who has looked 
into the hearts of some of the people on the other side of the water 
has found, that the people on the other side of the water, whatever 
may be said about their Governments, had learned their lesson from 
America before, and they believed in those principles before we 
promulgated them; and their statesmen, knowing that their people 
believed in them, accepted them — accepted them before the American 
representatives crossed the sea. We found them ready to lay down 
the foundations of that peace along the lines that America had sug- 
gested, and all of Europe was aware that what was being done was 
building up an American peace. In such circumstances we were 
under a peculiar compulsion to carry the work to the point which 
had filled our convictions from the first. 

Where did the suggestion first come from? Where did the idea 
first spread that there should be a society of nations? It was first 
suggested and it first spread in the United States, and some ' 
gentlemen were the chief proponents of it who are now objecting to 
the adoption of the covenant of the league of nations. They went 
further, some of them, than any principles of that covenant goes, and 
now for some reason which I must admit is inscrutable to me they 
are opposing the very thing into which they put their heart and their 
genius. All Europe knew that we were doing an American thing 
when we put the covenant of the league of nations at the beginning 
of the treaty, and one of the most interesting things over there was 
our dealing with some of the most cynical men I had to deal with, 
and there were some cynics over there— men who believed in what 
has come to be known as the old Darwinian idea of the survival of 
the fittest. They said : " In nature the strong eats up the weak, and 
in politics the strong overcomes and dominates the weak. It has al- 
ways been so, and it is always going to be so." When I first got to 
Paris they talked about the league of nations indulgently in my 
presence, politely. I think some of them had the idea, " Oh, well, 
we must humor Wilson along so that he will not make a public fuss 
about it," and those very men, before our conferences were over, 
suggested more often than anybody else that some of the most diffi- 
cult and delicate tasks in carrying out this peace should be left to 



144 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

the league of nations, and they all admitted that the league of na- 
tions, which they had deemed an ideal dream, was a demonstrable, 
practical necessity. This treaty can not be carried out without the 
league of nations, and I will tell you some interesting cases. 

I have several times said, and perhaps I may say again, that one 
of the principal things about this treaty is that it establishes the 
land titles of the world. It says, for example, that Bohemia shall 
belong to the Bohemians and not to the Austrians or to the Hun- 
garians; that if the Bohemians do not want to live under a mon- 
archy, dual or single, it is their business and not ours, and they can 
do what they please with their own country. We have said of the 
Austrian territories south of Austria and Hungary, occupied by the 
Jugo- Slavs, " These never did belong to Austria ; they always did 
belong to the Slavs, and the Slavs shall have them for their own, 
and we will guarantee the title." I have several times asked, " Sup- 
pose that the land titles of a State like Montana were clearly enough 
stated and somewhere recorded, but that there was no way of enforc- 
ing them." You know what would happen. Every one of you would 
enforce his own land title. You used to go armed here long ago, 
and you would resume the habit if there was nobody to guarantee 
your legal title. You would have to resume the habit. If society 
is not going to guarantee your titles, you have got to see to it your- 
selves that others respect them. That was the condition of Europe and 
will be the condition of Europe again if these settled land titles 
which have been laid out are not guaranteed by organized society, 
and the only organized society that can guarantee them is a society 
of nations. 

It was not easy to draw the line. It was not a surveyor's task. 
There were not well-known points from which to start and to which 
to go, because, for example, we were trying to give the Bohemians 
the lands where the Bohemians lived, but the Bohemians did not 
stop at a straight line. If they will pardon the expression, they 
slopped over. And Germans slopped over into Poland and in some 
places there was an almost inextricable mixture of the two popula- 
tions. Everybody said that the statistics lied. They said the Ger- 
man statistics with regard to high Silesia, for example, were not 
true, because the Germans wanted to make it out that the Germans 
were in a majority there, and the Poles declared that the Poles were 
in the majority there. We said, "This is a difficult business. Sitting 
in Paris we can not tell by count how many Poles there are in high 
Silesia, or how many Germans, and if we could count them, we can 
not tell from Paris what they want. High Silesia does not belong 
to us, it does not belong to anybody but the people who live in it. 
We will do this: We will put that territory under the care of the 
league of nations for a little period ; we will establish a small armed 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 145 

force there, made up of contingents out of the different allied nations 
so that no one of them would be in control, and then we will hold a 
referendum, and high Silesia shall belong either to German}^ or to 
Poland as the people in high Silesia desire." That is only one case 
out of half a dozen. In regions where the make-up of the popula- 
tion is doubtful or the desire of the population is as yet unascer- 
tained, the league of nations is to be the instrumentality by which 
the goods are to be delivered to the people to whom they belong. 
No other international conference ever conceived such a purpose, 
and no earlier conference of that sort would have been willing to 
carry out such a purpose. Up to the time of this war, my 
fellow-citizens, it was the firm and fixed conviction of states- 
men in Europe that the greater nations ought to dominate and 
guide and determine the destiny of the weaker nations, and the 
American principle was rejected. The American principle is that, 
just as the weak man has the same legal rights that the strong man 
has, just as the poor man has the same rights as the rich, though I 
am sorry to say he does not always get them, so as between nations 
the principle of equality is the only principle of justice, and the weak 
nations have just as many rights and just the same rights as the 
strong nations. If you do not establish that principle, then this 
war is going to come again, because this war came by aggresion / 
upon a weak nation. 

What happened, my fellow citizens? Don't you remember? The 
Crown Prince of Austria was assassinated in Serbia. Not assassi- 
nated by anybody over whom the Government of Serbia had any 
control, but assassinated by some man who had at his heart the 
memory of something that was intolerable to him that had been 
clone to the people that he belonged to, and the Austrian Govern- 
ment, not immediately but by suggestion from Berlin, where it was 
whispered, " We are ready for the World War, and this is a good 
chance to begin it; the other nations do not believe we are going to 
begin it ; we will begin it and overwhelm France, first of all, before 
the others can come to her rescue." The Austrian Government sent 
an ultimatum to Serbia practically demanding of her that she sur- 
render to them her sovereign rights, and gave her 24 hours to decide. 
Poor Serbia, in her sudden terror, with memory of things that had 
happened before and might happen again, practically yielded to 
every demand, and with regard to a little portion of the ultimatum 
said she would like to talk it over with them, and they did not dare 
wait. They knew that if the world ever had the facts of that dis- 
pute laid before them the opinion of mankind would overwhelm 
anybody that took aggression against Serbia in such circumstances. 
The point is that they chose this little nation. They had always 

141677— S. Doc. 120, 66-1 10 



14(3 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

chosen the Balkans as the ground of their intrigue. German princes 
were planted all through the Balkans, so that when Germany got 
ready she could use the Balkan situation as pawns in her game. 

And what does the treaty of peace do? The treaty of peace sets 
all those nations up in independence again: gives Serbia back what 
had been torn away from her. sets up the Jugo-Slavic States and the 
Bohemian Stares under the name of Czechoslovakia; and if you 
leave it at that, you leave those nations just as weak as they were 
before. By giving them their land titles, you do not make them 
any stronger. You make them stronger in spirit, it may be, they 
see a new day. they feel a new enthusiasm, their old love of their 
country can now express itself in action, but physically they are 
no stronger than they were before, and that road that we heard so 
much of — from Bremen to Bagdad — is wide open. The Germans 
were traveling that road. Their general staff interrupted the game. 
The merchants and manufacturers and bankers of Germany were 
making conquest of the world. All they had to do was to wait a 
little while longer, and long German fingers would have been 
stretched all through that country which never could have been 
withdrawn. The war spoiled the game. German intrigue was pene- 
trating all those countries and controlling them. The dirty center 
of the intrigue, dirty in every respect, was Constantinople, and from 
there ramified all the threads that made this web. in the center of 
which was the venomous spider. If you leave that road open, if 
you leave those nations to take care of themselves, knowing that they 
can not take care of themselves, then you have committed the un- 
pardonable sin of undoing the victory which our boys won. You 
say. ** TThat have we got to do with it ! " Let us answer that ques- 
tion, and not from a sentimental point of view at all. Suppose we 
did not have any hearts under our jackets. Suppose we did not 
care for these people. Care for them ? Why, their kinsmen are 
everywhere in the communities of the United States, people who love 
people over there are everywhere in the United States. We are 
made up out of mankind: we can not tear our hearts away from 
them. Our hearts are theirs, but suppose they were not. Suppose 
we had forgotten everything except the material, commercial, mone- 
tary interests of the United States. You can not get those markets 
away from Germany if you let her reestablish her old influence 
there. The 300.000.000 people between the Rhine and the Ural 
Mountains will be in such a condition that they can not buy any- 
thing, their industries can not start, unless they surrender them- 
selves to the bankers of Mittel-Europa. that you used to hear about; 
and the peoples of Italy and France and Belgium, some SO.000,000 
strong, who are your natural customers, can not buy anything in 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 147 

disturbed and bankrupt Europe. If you are going to trade with 
them, you have got to go partners with them. 

When I hear gentlemen talk about America standing for herself, I 
wonder where they have been living. Has America disconnected 
herself from the rest of the world % Her ambition has been to connect 
herself with all the rest of the world commercially, and she is bank- 
rupt unless she does. Look at the actual situation right now, my 
fellow citizens. The war was a very great stimulation to some of the 
greatest of the manufacturing industries of this country, and a very 
interesting thing has been going on. You remember, some of you 
perhaps painfully remember, that the Congress of the United States 
put a very heavy tax on excess profits, and a great many men who 
were making large excess profits said, " All right, we can manage this. 
These will not be profits ; Ave will spend these in enlarging our plants, 
advertising, increasing our facilities, spreading our agencies." They 
have got ready for a bigger business than they can do unless they 
have the world to do it in, and if they have not the world to do it in, 
there will be a recession of prosperity in this country; there will be 
unemployment ; there will be bankruptcy in some cases. The giant is 
so big that he will burst his jacket. The rest of the world is necessary 
to us, if you want to put it on that basis. I do not like to put it on 
that basis. That is not the American basis. America does not want 
to feed upon the rest of the world. She wants to feed it and serve it- 
America, if I may say it without offense to great peoples for whom 
I have a profound admiration on the other side of the water, is the 
only national idealistic force in the world, and idealism is going to 
save the world. Selfishness will embroil it. Narrow selfishness will 
tie things up into ugly knots that you can not get open except with a 
sword. All the human passions, if aroused on the wrong side, will 
do the world an eternal disservice. 

I remember somebody said to me one day, using a familiar phrase, 
that this was an age in which mind was monarch, and my reply was, 
" Well, if that is true, mind is one of those modern monarchs that 
reign and do not govern ; as a matter of fact, we are governed by a 
great popular assembly made up of the passions, and the best that 
we can manage is that the handsome passions shall be in the ma- 
jority." That is the task of mankind, that the handsome passions, 
the handsome sentiments, the handsome purposes, shall always have 
a dominating and working majority, so that they will always be able 
to outvote the baser passions, to defeat all the cupidities and mean- 
nesses and criminalities of the world. That is the program of civil- 
ization. The basis of the program of civilization, I want to say with 
all the emphasis that I am capable of, is Christian and not pagan, 
and in the presence of this inevitable partnership with the rest of 
the world, these gentlemen say, " We will not sign the articles of 



148 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON". 

copartnership." Well, why not? You have heard, I dare say, only 
about four things in the covenant of the league of nations. I have 
mot heard them talk about anything else. It is a very wonderful 
document and you would think there were only four things in it. 
The things that they talk about are the chance to get out, the dangers 
of article 10, the Monroe doctrine, and the risk that other nations 
may interfere in our domestic affairs. Those are the things that keep 
them awake at night, and I want very briefly to take those things in 
their sequence. 

I do not like to discuss some of them. If I go to do a thing, I do 
not say at the beginning, " My chief interest in this thing is how I 
am going to get out." I will not be a very trusted or revered partner 
if it is evident that my fear is that I will continue to be a partner. 
But we will take that risk. We will sit by the door with our hand 
on the knob, and sit on the edge of our chair. There is nothing in 
the covenant to prevent our going out whenever we please, with the 
single limitation that we give two years' notice. The gentlemen who 
discuss this thing do not object to the two years' notice ; they say, " It 
says that you can get out after two years' notice if at that time you 
liave fulfilled your international obligations," and they are afraid 
somebody will have the right to say that they have not. That right 
can not belong to anybody unless you give it to somebody, and the 
covenant of the league does not give it to anybody. It is absolutely 
left to the conscience of this Nation, as to the conscience of every 
other member of the league, to determine whether at the time of its 
withdrawal it has fulfilled its international obligations or not; and 
inasmuch as the United States always has fulfilled its international 
obligations, I wonder what these gentlemen are afraid of ! There is 
only one thing to restrain us from getting out, and that is the 
opinion of our fellow men, and that will not restrain us in any con- 
ceivable circumstance if we have followed the honorable course which 
we always have followed. I would be ashamed as an American to be 
afraid that when we wanted to get out we should not have fulfilled 
our international obligations. 

Then comes article 10, for I am taking the questions in the order 
in which they come in the covenant itself. Let me repeat to you 
article 10 nearly verbatim ; I am not trying to repeat it exactly as it is 
written in the covenant. Every member of the league agrees to re- 
spect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial in- 
tegrity and existing political independence of the other members of 
the league. There is the guarantee of the land titles. Without that 
clause, there is no guarantee of the land titles. Without that clause 
the heart of the recent war is not cut out. The heart of the recent 
war was an absolute disregard of the territorial integrity and political 
independence of the smaller nations. If you do not cut the heart of 



ADDRESSES OE PRESIDENT WILSOX. 149 

the war out. that heart is going to live and beat and grow stronger-;, 
and we will have the cateclysm again. Then the article adds that it 
shall be the duty of the council of the league to advise the members 
of the league what steps may be necessary from time to time to carry 
out this agreement; to advise, not to direct. The Congress of the 
United States is just as free under that article to refuse to declare 
war as it is now ; and it is very much safer than it is now. The 
opinion of the world and of the United States bade it to declare war 
in April. 1917. It would have been shamed before all mankind if it 
had not declared war then. It was not given audible advice by any- 
body but its own people, but it knew that the whole world was wait- 
ing for it to fulfill a manifest moral obligation. This advice can not 
be given, my fellow citizens, without the vote of the United States- 
The advice can not be given without a unanimous vote of the council 
of the league. The member of the council representing the United 
States has to vote aye before the United States or any other country 
can be advised to go to war under that agreement, unless the United 
States is herself a party. What does that mean? Unless the United 
States is going to seize somebody else's territory or somebody else is 
going to seize the territory of the United States. I do not contem- 
plate it as a likely contingency that we are going to steal somebody 
else's territory, I dismiss that as not a serious probability, and I da 
not see anybody within reach who is going to take any of ours. But 
suppose we should turn highwayman, or that some other nation 
should turn highwayman, and stretch its hands out for what belongs 
to us. Then what difference does it make what advice the council 
gives? We are in the scrap anyhow. In those circumstances Con- 
gress is not going to Avait to hear what the council of the league says 
to determine whether it is going to war or not. The war will be its 
war. So that any way you turn article 10 it does not alter in the 
least degree the freedom and independence of the United States with 
regard to its action in respect of war. All of that is stated in such 
plain language that I can not for the life of me understand how 
anybody reads it any other way. I know perfectly well that the men 
who wrote it read it the way I am interpreting it. I know that it is 
intended to be written that way, and if I am any judge of the English 
language, they succeeded in writing it that way. 

Then they are anxious about the Monroe doctrine. The covenant 
says in so many words that nothing in that document shall be taken 
as invalidating the Monroe doctrine. I do not see what more you 
could say. While the matter was under debate in what was called 
the commission on the league of nations, the body that drew the 
covenant up, in which were representatives of 11 nations, I tried to 
think of some other language that could state it more unqualifiedly 
and I could not think of any other. Can you ? Xothing in that docu- 



150 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

ment should be taken as invalidating the Monroe doctrine — I can not 
say it any plainer than that — and yet by a peculiar particularity of 
anxiety these gentlemen can not believe their eyes ; and from one point 
of view it is not strange, my fellow citizens. The rest of the world 
always looked askance on the Monroe doctrine. It is true, though 
some people have forgotten it, that President Monroe uttered that 
doctrine at the suggestion of the British cabinet, and in its initiation, 
in its birth, it came from Mr. Canning, who was prime minister of 
England and who wanted the aid of the United States in checking 
the ambition of some of the European countries to establish their 
power in South America. Notwithstanding that, Great Britain did 
not like the Monroe doctrine as we grew so big. It was one thing to 
have our assistance and another thing for us not to need her assistance. 
And the rest of the world had studiously avoided on all sorts of 
interesting occasions anything that could be interpreted as an ac- 
knowledgment of the Monroe doctrine. So I am not altogether sur- 
prised that these gentlemen can not believe their eyes. Here the 
nations of Europe say that they are entering into an arrangement 
no part of which shall be interpreted as invalidating the Monroe 
doctrine. I do not have to say anything more about that. To my 
mind, that is eminently satisfactory, and as long as I am President I 
shall feel an added freedom in applying, when I think fit, the Monroe 
doctrine. I am very much interested in it, and I foresee occasions 
when it might be appropriately applied. 

In the next place they are afraid that other nations will interfere 
in our domestic questions. There, again, the covenant of the league 
distinctly says that if any dispute arises which is found to relate to 
an exclusively domestic question, the council shall take no action 
with regard to it and make no report concerning it, and the ques- 
tions that these gentlemen most often mention, namely the questions 
of the tariff and of immigration and of naturalization, are acknowl- 
edged by every authoritative student of international law without 
exception to be as, of course, domestic questions. These gentlemen 
want us to make an obvious thing painfully obvious by making a 
list of the domestic questions, and I object to making the list for 
this reason, that if you make a list you may leave something out. 
I remind all students of law within the sound of my voice of the old 
principle of the law that the mention of one thing is the exclusion 
of other things; that if you meant everything, you ought to have 
said everything; that if you said a few things, you did not have the 
rest in mind. I object to making a list of domestic questions, be- 
cause a domestic question may come up which I did not think of. 
In every such case the United States would be just as secure in her 
independent handling of the question as she is now. 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 151 

Then, outside the covenant is the question of Shantung. Some 
gentlemen want to make a reservation or something that they clothe 
with a handsome name with regard to the Shantung provision, which 
is that the rights which Germany illictly got, for she got it by duress, 
from China shall pass to Japan. While the war is in progress, 
Great Gritian and France expressly in a written treaty, though a 
secret treaty, entered into an engagement with Japan that she should 
have all that Germany had in the Province of Shantung. If we re- 
pudiate this treaty in that matter Great Britain and France can not 
repudiate the other treaty, and they can not repudiate this treaty in- 
asmuch as it confirms the other. Therefore, in order to take away 
from Japan, for she is in physical possession of it now, what Ger- 
many had in China, we shall have to fight Japan and Great Britain 
and France ; and at the same time do China no service, because one 
of the things that is known to everybod}^ is that when the United 
States consented, because of this promise of Great Britain and 
France, to putting that provision in the treaty, Japan agreed that 
she would not take all of what was given to her in the treaty ; that, 
on the contrary, she would, just as soon as possible, after the treaty 
was carried out return every sovereign right or right resembling a 
sovereign right that Germany had enjoyed in Shantung to the Gov- 
ernment of China, and that she would retain at Shantung only those 
economic rights with regard to the administration of the railway 
and the exploitation of certain mines that other countries enjoy else- 
where in China. It is not an exceptional arrangement — a very un- 
fortunate arrangement, I think, elsewhere as there, for China, but 
but not an exceptional arrangement. Under it Japan will enjoy 
privileges exactly similar and concessions exactly similar to what 
other nations enjoy elsewhere in China and nothing more. In addi- 
tion to that, if the treaty is entered into by the United States China 
will for the first time in her history have a forum to which to bring 
every wrong that is intended against her or that has been committed 
against her. 

When you are studying article 10, my fellow citizens, I beg of you 
that you will read article 11. I do not hear that very often referred 
to. Article 11 — I am not going to quote the words of it — makes it 
the right of any member of the league to call attention to anything, 
anywhere, that is likely to disturb the peace of the world or the good 
understanding between nations upon which the peace of the world 
depends. Every aspiring people, every oppressed people, every 
people whose hearts can no longer stand the strain of the tyranny 
that has been put upon them, can find a champion to speak for it in 
the forum of the world. Until that covenant is adopted, what is the 
international law ? International law is that no matter how deeply 
the United States is interested in something in some other part of 



152 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

the world that she believes is going to set the world on fire or dis- 
turb the friendly relations between two great nations, she can not 
speak of it unless she can show that her own interests are directly in- 
volved. It is a hostile and unfriendly act to call attention to it, and 
article 11 says, in so many words, that it shall be the friendly right 
of every nation to call attention to any such matter anywhere; so 
that if anybody contemplates anything that is an encroachment upon 
the rights of China he can be summoned to the bar of the world. 
I do not know when any nation that could not take care of itself, as 
unfortunately China can not, ever had such a humane advantage ac- 
corded it before. It is not only we, my fellow citizens, who are 
caught in all the implications of the affairs of the world ; everybody 
is caught in it now, and it is right that anything that affects the 
world should be made everybody's business. 

The heart of the covenant of the league of nations is this: Every 
member of the league promises never to go to war without first hav- 
ing done one or other of two things, either having submitted the 
matter to arbitration, in which case it agrees absolutely to abide by 
the award, or having submitted it to discussion by the council of the 
league of nations. If it submits it for discussion by the council, it 
agrees to allow six months for the discussion and to lay all the docu- 
ments and facts in its possession before the council, which is author- 
ized to publish them ; and even if it is not satisfied with the opinion 
rendered by the council, it agrees that it will not go to war within 
less than three months after the publication of that judgment. There 
are nine months in which the whole matter is before the bar of man- 
kind, and, my fellow citizens, I make this confident prediction, that 
no nation will dare submit a bad case to that jury. I believe that this 
covenant is better than 95 per cent insurance against war. Suppose 
it was only 5 per cent insurance ; would not you want it ? If you can 
get any insurance against war, do not you want it? I ask any 
mother, any father, any brother, anybody with a heart, " Do not you 
want some insurance against war, no matter how little?" And the 
experience of mankind, from the conferences between employers 
and employees, is that if people get together and talk things over, it 
becomes more and more difficult to fight the longer they talk. There 
is not any subject that has not two sides to it, and the reason most 
men will not enter into discussion with antagonists is that they are 
afraid the other fellows' side will be stronger than theirs. The only 
thing you are afraid of, my fellow citizens, is the truth. 

A cynical old politician once said to his son, " John, do not bother 
your head about lies; they will take care of themselves, but if you 
ever hear me denying anything you may make up your mind it is so." 
The only thing that is formidable is the truth. I learned what I 
know about Mexico, which is not as much as I should desire, by hear- 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 153 

ing a large number of liars tell me all about it. At first, I was very 
much confused, because the narratives did not tally, and then one 
day, when I had a lucid interval, it occurred to me that that was 
because what was told me was not true. The truth always matches ; it 
is lies that do not match. I also observed that back of all these con- 
fusing contradictions there was a general mass of facts which they 
all stated, and I knew that that was the region into which their lying 
capacity did not extend. They had not had time to make up any 
lies about that, and the correspondences in their narratives consti- 
tuted the truth. The differences could be forgotten. So I learned a 
great deal about Mexico by listening to a sufficiently large number of 
liars. The truth is the regnant and triumphant thing in this world. 
You may trample it under foot, you may blind its eyes with blood, 
but you can not kill it, and sooner or later it rises up and seeks and 
gets its revenge. 

That is what it behooA^es us to remember, my fellow citizens, in 
these radical days. The men who want to cure the wrongs of govern- 
ments by destroying government are going to be destroyed them- 
selves; destroyed, I mean, by the chaos that they have created, be- 
cause remove the organism of society and, even if you are strong 
enough to take anything that you want, you are not smart enough 
to keep it. The next stronger fellow will take it away from you 
and the most audacious group amongst you will make slaves and tools 
of you. That is the truth that is going to master society in Russia 
and in any other place that tries Russia's unhappy example. I hope 
you will not think it inappropriate if I stop here to express my 
shame as an American citizen at the race riots that have occurred 
in some places in this country where men have forgotten humanity 
and justice and ordered society and have run amuck. That consti- 
tutes a man not only the enemy of society but his own enemy and the 
enemy of justice. I want to say this, too, that a strike of the police- 
men of a great city, leaving that city at the mercy of an army of 
thugs, is a crime against civilization. In my judgment, the obliga- 
tion of a policeman is as sacred and direct as the obligation of a 
soldier. He is a public servant, not a private employee, and the 
whole honor and safety of the community is in his hands. He has 
no right to prefer any private advantage to the public safety. I 
hope that that lesson will be burned in so that it will never again be 
forgotten, because the pride of America is that it can exercise self- 
control. That is what a self-governing nation is, not merely a na- 
tion that elects people to do its jobs for it, but a nation that can keep 
its head, concert its purposes, and find out how its purposes can be 
executed. 

One of the noblest sentences ever uttered was uttered by Mr. Gar- 
field before he became President. He was a Member of Congress, 



154 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

as I remember it, at the time of Mr. Lincoln's assassination. He 
happened to be in New York City, and Madison Square was filled 
with a surging mass of deeply excited people when the news of the 
murder came. Mr. Garfield was at the old Fifth Avenue Hotel, 
which had a balcony out over the entrance, and they begged him to 
go out and say something to the people. He went out and, after he 
had attracted their attention, he said this beautiful thing : " My fel- 
low citizens, the President is dead, but the Government lives and 
God Omnipotent reigns." America is the place where you can not 
kill your Government by killing the men who conduct it. The only 
way you can kill government in America is by making the men and 
women of America forget how to govern, and nobody can do that. 
They sometimes find the team a little difficult to drive, but they 
sooner or later whip it into harness. And, my fellow citizens, the 
underlying thought of what I have tried to say to you to-night is 
the organization of the world for order and peace. Our fortunes are 
directly involved, and my mind reverts to that scene that I painted 
for you at the outset — that slope at Suresnes, those voiceless graves, 
those weeping women — and I say. " My fellow citizens, the pledge 
that speaks from those graves is demanded of us. We must see to 
it that those boys did not die in vain. We must fulfill the. great 
mission upon which they crossed the sea." 



ADDRESS AT COEUR D'ALENE, IDAHO, 

SEPTEMBER 12, 1919. 



Your excellency, my fellow citizens, it is with the greatest 
pleasure that I find myself facing an audience in this great State. 
I echo the wish of the governor that it might be our privilege to 
sta}' a long time in Idaho and know something more than her fame, 
know her people, come in contact with her industries, and see the 
things that we have all so long read about and admired from a dis- 
tance ; but, unfortunately, it is necessary for us to go back to Wash- 
ington as soon as we can, though it was a great pleasure to escape 
from Washington. Washington is a very interesting place, but it 
is a very lonely place. The people of the United States do not live 
there, and in order to know what the people of the United States 
are thinking about and talking about it is necessary to come and 
find out for yourself . That really is my errand. 

I. have taken pains since I was a boy so to saturate myself in the 
traditions of America that I generally feel a good deal of confidence 
that the impulses which I find in myself are American impulses ; but 
no matter how thoroughly American a man may be, he needs con- 
stantly to renew his touch with all parts of America and to be sure 
that his mind is guided, if he be in public station, by the thoughts 
and purposes of his fellow countrymen. It was, therefore, with the 
most earnest desire to get in touch with you and the rest of my fel- 
low countrymen that I undertook this trip, for, my fellow country- 
men, we are facing a decision now in which we can not afford to 
make a mistake. We must not let ourselves be deceived as to the 
gravity of that decision or as to the implications of that decision. 
It will mean a great deal now, but it will mean infinitely more in 
the future. America has to do at this moment nothing less than 
prove to the world whether she has meant what she said in the past. 

I must confess that I have been amazed that there are some men 
in responsible positions who are opposed to the ratification of the 
treaty of peace altogether. It is natural that so great a document, 
full of so many particular provisions, should draw criticism upon 
itself for this, that, or the other provision. It is natural that a world 
settlement, for it is nothing less, should give occasion for a great 

155 



156 ADDRESSES OE PRESIDENT WILSON. 

many differences of opinion with regard to particular settlements 
of it. but I must admit that it amazes me that there should be any 
who should propose that the arrangement be rejected altogether, 
because, my fellow citizens, this is the issue : TTe went into this Great 
War from which we have just issued with certain assurances given 
ourselves and given the world, and these assurances can not be ful- 
filled unless this treaty is adopted. TTe told the world and we as- 
sured ourselves that we went into this war in order to see to it that 
the kind of purpose represented by Germany in this war should 
never be permitted to be accomplished by Germany or anybody else. 
Do not let your thoughts dwell too constantly upon Germany. Ger- 
many attempted this outrageous thing, but Germany was not the 
only country that had ever entertained the purpose of subjecting the 
peoples of the world to its will, and when we went into this war we 
said that we sent our soldiers across the seas not because we thought 
this was an American fight in particular, but because we knew that 
the purpose of Germany was against liberty, and that where any- 
body was fighting liberty it was our duty to go into the contest. TTe 
set this Xation up with the profession that we wanted to set an 
example of liberty not only, but to lead the world in the paths of 
liberty and justice and of right: and at last, after long reflection, 
after long hesitation, after trying to persuade ourselves that this was 
a European war and nothing more, we suddenly looked our own 
consciences in the face and said, "This is not merely a European war. 
This is a war which imperils the very principles for which this 
Government was set up, and it is our duty to lend all the force that 
we have, whether of men or of resources, to the resistance of these 
designs." And it was America — never let anybody forget this — it 
was America that saved the world, and those who propose the re- 
jection of the treaty propose that, after having redeemed the world, 
we should desert the world. It would be nothing less. 

The settlements of this treaty can not be maintained without the 
concerted action of all the great Governments of the world. I asked 
you just now not to think exclusively about Germany, but turn your 
thoughts back to what it was that Germany proposed. Germany did 
direct her first force against France and against Belgium, but you 
know that it was not her purpose to remain in France, though it was 
part of her purpose to remain in Belgium. She was using her arms 
against these people so that they could not prevent what she intended 
elsewhere, and what she intended elsewhere was to make an open line 
of dominion between her and the Far East. The formula that she 
adopted was Bremen to Bagdad, the North Sea to Persia — to crush 
not only little Serbia, whom she first started to crush, but all the 
Balkan States, get Turkey in her grasp, take all the Turkish and 
Arabian lands beyond, penetrate the wealthy realms of Persia, open 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 157 

the gates of India, and, by dominating the central trade routes of 
the world, dominate the world itself. That was her plan ; and what 
does the treaty of peace do? For I want you to remember, my fel- 
low countrymen, that this treaty is not going to stand by itself. The 
treaty with Austria has now been signed; it will presently be sent 
over, and I shall lay that before the Senate of the United States. It 
will be laid down along exactly the same lines as the treaty with 
Germany; and the lines of the treaty with Germany suggest this, 
that we are setting up the very States which Germany and Austria 
intended to dominate as independent, self-governing units. We are 
giving them what they never could have got with their own strength, 
what they could have got only by the united strength of the armies of 
the world. But we have not made them strong by making them in- 
dependent. We have given them what I have called their land titles. 
We have said, " These lands that others have tried to dominate and 
exploit for their own uses belong to you, and we assign them to you 
in fee simple. They never did belong to anybody else. They were 
loot. It was brigandage to take them. We give them to you in iee 
simple.'- But what is the use of setting up the titles if we do not 
guarantee them? And that guaranty is the only guaranty against 
the repetition of the war we have gone through just so soon as the 
German nation, 60,000,000 strong, can again recover its strength and 
its spirit, for east of Germany lies the fertile field of intrigue and 
power. At this moment the only people who are dealing with the 
Bolshevist government in Russia are the Germans. They are frater- 
nizing with the few who exercise control in that distracted country. 
They are making all their plans that the financing of Russia and the 
commerce of Russia and the development of Russia shall be as soon 
as possible in the hands of Germans; and just so soon as she can 
swing that great power, that is also her road to the East and to the 
domination of the world. If you do not guarantee the titles that 
you are getting up in these treaties, you leave the whole ground fal- 
low in which again to sow the dragon's teeth with the harvest of 
armed men. 

That, my fellow citizens, is what article 10, that you hear so much 
talked about in the covenant of the league of nations, does. It guar- 
antees the land titles of the world ; and if you do not guarantee the 
land titles of the world, there can not be the ordered society in which 
men can live. Off here in this beloved continent, with its great free 
stretches and its great free people, we have not realized the cloud 
of dread and terror under which the people of Europe have lived. I 
have heard men over there "say, " It is intolerable. We would rather 
die now than live another 50 years under the cloud that has hung 
over us ever since the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, because we 



158 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON". 

have known that this force was gathering, we have known what the 
purpose was ultimately to be, we have known that blood and terror 
lay ahead of us, and we can not and will not live under that cloud 
any more." America, my fellow citizens, is necessary to the peace of 
the world. America is absolutely necessary to the peace of the world. 
Germany realizes that ; and I want to tell you now and here — I wish 
I could proclaim it in tones so loud that they would reach the world — 
// Germany wants us to stay out of this treaty. Not under any decep- 
tion. Not under the deception that we will turn in sympathy toward 
her. Not under the delusion that we would seek in any direct or 
conscious way to serve Germany, but with the knowledge that the 
guaranties will not be sufficient without America, and that, inasmuch 
as Germany is out of the arrangement, it will be very useful to Ger- 
many to have America out of the arrangement. Germany knows 
that if America is out of the arrangement America will lose the confi- 
dence and cooperation of all the other nations in the world, and, 
fearing America's strength, she wants to see America alienated from 
the peoples from whom she has been alienated. It is a perfectly 
reasonable program. She wants to see America isolated. She is 
isolated. She wants to see one great nation left out of this combina- 
tion which she never would again dare face. Evidences are not 
lacking — nay, evidences are abounding — that the pro-German propa- 
ganda has started up in this country coincidently with the opposition 
to the adoption of this treaty. I want those who have any kind of 
sympathy with the purposes with which we went into the war now to 
reflect upon this proposition: Are we going to prove the enemy of 
the rest of the world just when we have proved their savior? The 
thing is intolerable. The thing is impossible. America has never 
been unfaithful and she never will be unfaithful. 

Do not let anybody delude you, my fellow citizens, with the pose 
of being an American. If I am an American I want at least to be 
an intelligent America. If I am a true American I will study the 
true interests of America. If I am a true American I will have the 
world vision that America has always had, drawing her blood, draw- 
ing her genius, as she has drawn her people, out of all the great con- 
structive peoples of the world. A true American conceives America 
in the atmosphere and whole setting of her fortune and her destiny. 
And America needs the confidence of the rest of the world just as much 
as other nations do. America needs the cooperation of the rest of 
the world to release her resources, to make her markets, above all 
things else to link together the spirits of men who mean to redeem 
the race from the wrongs that it has suffered. This western country 
is par excellence the country of progressiveism. I am not now using 
it with a big "P." It does not make any difference whether you 
belong to the Progressive Party or not; you belong to the progres- 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 159 

sive thought, and I hope every intelligent man belongs to the pro- 
gressive thought. It is the only thought that the world is going 
to tolerate. If you believe in progress, if you believe in progressive 
reform, if you believe in making the lot of men better, if you be- 
lieve in purifying politics and enlarging the purposes of public 
policy, then you have got to have a world in which that will be pos- 
sible : and if America does not enter with all her soul into this new 
world arrangement, progressives might as well go out of business, 
because there is going to be universal disorder, as there is now uni- 
versal unrest. 

Do not mistake the signs of the times, my fellow countrymen, and 
do not think that America is immune. The poison that has spread 
all through that pitiful nation of Russia is spreading all through 
Europe. There is not a statesman in Europe who does not dread the 
infection of it, and just so certainly as those people are disconcerted, 
thrown back upon their own resources, disheartened, rendered cyni- 
cal by the withdrawal of the only people in the world they trust, just 
so certainly there will be universal upsetting of order in Europe. 
And if the order of Europe is upset, do you think America is going 
to be quiet? Have you not been reading in the papers of the intoler- 
able thing that has just happened in Boston? When the police of a 
great city walk out and leave that city to be looted they have com- 
mitted an intolerable crime against civilization; and if that spirit 
is going to prevail, where are your programs? How can you carry 
a program out when every man is taking what he can get? How 
can you carry a program out when there is no authority upon which 
to base it? How can you carry a program out when every man is 
looking out for his own selfish interests and refuses to be bound by 
any law that regards the interests of the others? There will be no 
reform in this world for a generation if the conditions of the world 
are not now brought to settled order, and they can not be brought to 
settled order without the cooperation of America. 

I am not speaking with conjecture, my fellow citizens. I would 
be ashamed of myself if upon a theme so great as this I should seek 
to mislead you by overstatement of any kind. I know what I am 
talking about. I have spent six months amidst those disturbed peo- 
ples on the other side of the water, and I can tell you, now and here, 
that the only people they depend upon to bring the world to settled 
conditions are the people of America. A chill will go to their heart, 
a. discouragement will come down upon them, a cynicism will take 
possession of them, which will make progress impossible, if we do 
not take part not only, but do not take part with all our might and 
with all our genius. Everybody who loves justice and who hopes for 
programs of reform must support the unqualified adoption of this 
treaty. I send this challenge out to the conscience of every man in 



160 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

America, that if he knows anything of the conditions of the world, 
if he knows anything of the present state of society throughout the 
world and really loves justice and purposes just reform, he must sup- 
port the treaty with Germany. I do not want to say that and 
have it proved by tragedy, for if this treaty should be refused, if it 
should be impaired, then amidst the tragedy of the things that would 
follow every man would be converted to the opinion that I am now 
uttering, but I do not want to see that sort of conversion. I do not 
want to see an era of blood and of chaos to convert men to the only 
practical methods of justice. 

My fellow citizens, there are a great many things needing to be 
reformed in America. We are not exempt from those very subtle in- 
fluences which lead to all sorts of incidental injustice. We ourselves 
are in danger at this present moment of minorities trying to control 
our affairs, and whenever a minority tries to control the affairs of the 
country it is fighting against the interest of the country just as much 
as if it were trying to upset the Government. If you think that you 
can afford to live in a chaotic world, then speak words of encourage- 
ment to the men who are opposing this treaty, but if you want to have 
your own fortunes held steady, realize that the fortunes of the world 
must be held steady ; that if you want to keep your own boys at home 
after this terrible experience, you will see that boys elsewhere are kept 
at home. Because America is not going to refuse, when the other 
catastrophe comes, again to attempt to save the world, and, having 
given this proof once, I pray God that we may not be given occasion 
to prove it again ! We went into this war promising every loving 
heart in this country who had parted with a beloved youngster that 
we were going to fight a war which would make that sacrifice unneces- 
sary again, and we must redeem that promise or be of all men the most 
unfaithful. If I did not go on this errand through the United States, 
if I did not do everything that was within my power that is honorable 
to get this treaty adopted, and adopted without qualification, I never 
could look another mother in the face upon Avhose cheeks there were 
the tears of sorrowful memory with regard to the boy buried across 
the sea. The moral compulsion laid upon America now is a compelling 
compulsion, and can not be escaped. My fellow countrymen, because 
it is a moral issue, because it is an issue in which is mixed up every sort 
of interest in America, I am not in the least uneasy about the result. 

If you put it on the lowest levels, you can not trade with a world 
disordered, and if you do not trade you draw your own industries 
within a narrower and narrower limit. This great State, with its 
untold natural resources, with its great undeveloped resources, will 
have to stand for a long generation stagnant because there are no 
distant markets calling for these things. All America will have to 
wait a long, anxious generation through to see the normal courses of 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 161 

her life restored. So, if I were putting it upon the lowest conceiv- 
able basis of the amount of money we could make, I would say, "We 
have got to assist in the restoration of order and the maintenance of 
order throughout the world by the maintenance of the morale of 
the world." You will say, "How? By arms?" That, I suspect, is 
what most of the opponents of the league of nations, at any rate, 
try to lead you to believe, that this is a league of arms. Why, my 
fellow citizens, it is a league to bring about the thing that America 
has been advocating ever since I was born. It is a league to bring it 
about that there shall not be war, but that there shall be substituted 
for it arbitration and the calm settlement of discussion. That is the 
heart of the league. The heart of the league is this: Every member 
of the league, and that will mean every fighting nation in the world 
except Germany, agrees that it will never go to war without first 
having done one or the other of two things — either having submitted 
the matter in dispute to arbitration, in which case it agrees abso- 
lutely to abide by the result, or having submitted it to consideration 
by the council of the league of nations, in which case it promises to 
lay all the documents, all the facts, in its possession before the 
council and to give the council six months in which to consider the 
matter, and, if it does not like the opinion of the council at the end 
of the six months, still to wait three months more before it resorts 
to arms. That is what America has been striving for. That is what 
the Congress of the United States directed me to bring about. Per- 
haps you do not know where ; it was in an unexpected place, in the 
naval appropriations bill. Congress, authorizing a great building 
program of ships and the expenditure of vast sums of money to 
make our Navy one of the strongest in the world, paused a moment 
and declared in the midst of the appropriation bill that it was the 
policy of the United States to bring about disarmament and that for 
that purpose it was the policy of the United States to cooperate in 
the creation of a great international tribunal to which should be 
submitted questions of international difference and controversy, and 
it directed the President of the United States, not later than the 
close of this war, to call together an international conference for 
that purpose. It even went so far as to make an appropriation to 
pay the expenses for the conduct of such a conference in the city of 
Washington. And that is a continuing provision of the naval ap- 
propriations bill. When I came back with this covenant of the 
league of nations, I had fulfilled the mandate of the Congress of the 
United States ; and now they do not like it. 

There is only one conceivable reason for not liking it, my fellow 
citizens, and to me as an American it is not a conceivable reason; 
that is that we should wish to do some nation some great wrong. 
141677— S. Doc. 120. 66-1 11 



162 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

If there is any nation in the world that can afford to submit its pur- 
poses to discussion, it is the American Nation. If I belonged to some 
other nations, there are some things that I know that I would not 
like to see submitted to the discussion of mankind, but I do not know 
anything in the present purposes of the United States that I would 
not be perfectly willing to lay upon any table of counsel in the world. 
In carrying out the mandate of the Congress, I was serving the age- 
long purpose of this great people, which purpose centers in justice 
and in peace. 

You will say, " Well, why not go in with reservations?" I wonder 
if you know what that means. If the Senate of the United States 
passes a resolution of ratification and says that it ratifies on condition 
that so and so is understood, that will have to be resubmitted to every 
signatory of the treaty; and what gravels me is that it will have to 
be submitted to the German Assembly at Weimar. That goes against 
my digestion. We can not honorably put anything in that treaty, 
which Germany has signed and ratified, with Germany's consent; 
whereas it is perfectly feasible, my fellow countrymen, if we put 
interpretations upon that treaty which its language clearly warrants, 
to notify the other Governments of the world that we do understand 
the treaty in that sense. It is perfectly feasible to do that, and per- 
fectly honorable to do that, because, mark you, nothing can be done 
under this treaty through the instrumentality of the council of the 
league of nations except by a unanimous vote. The vote of the 
United States will always be necessary, and it is perfectly legitimate 
for the United States to notify the other Governments beforehand 
that its vote in the council of the league of nations will be based upon 
such and such an understanding of the provisions of the treaty. 

The treaty is not susceptible of misunderstanding. I do not ob- 
ject to painting the rose or refining fine gold; there is not any 
phrase in the covenant of the league of nations that can legitimately 
be said to be of doubtful meaning, but if the Congress of the United 
States wants to state the meaning over again in other words and 
say to the other nations of the world, " We understand the treaty 
to mean what it says," I think that is a work of supererogation, but 
I do not see any moral objection to it. But anything that qualifies 
the treaty, anything that is a condition to our ratification of it, must 
be submitted to all the others, and we must go over this process 
again; this process which took six months of intensive labor, which 
took six months of very difficult adjustment and arrangement, which 
quieted jealousies, which allayed suspicions, which set aside contro- 
versies, which brought about the most extraordinary union of minds 
that was ever brought about in so miscellaneous an assembly, divided 
by so many interests. All that must be gone over again, and in the 
meantime the world must wait and its unrest grow deeper, and all 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 163 

the pulses of life go slower, waiting to see what is going to happen, 
all because the United States asks the other governments of the world 
to accept what they have already accepted in different language. 
That is all that it amounts to ; I means, all that the reasonable reser- 
vations amount to. Some of them amount to staying out altogeher, 
some of them amount to a radical change of the spirit of the instru- 
ment, but I am speaking now of those which some men of high 
conscience and of high public purpose are seriously pressing in order 
that there may be no misunderstanding. You can avoid a misunder- 
standing without changing the document. You can avoid a mis- 
understanding without qualifying the terms of the document, be- 
cause, as I have said and shall say again and again, America is at 
liberty as one of the voting members of the partnership to state how 
she understands the articles of copartnership. 

I beg that these things may sink in your thoughts, my fellow coun- 
trymen, because we are at a turning point in the fortunes of the world. 
Out upon these quiet hills and in these great valleys it is difficult some- 
times for me to remember the turmoil of the world in which I have 
been mixing on the other side of the sea ; it is difficult for me to re- 
member the surging passions which moved upon the face of the other 
continents of the world ; it is difficult for me to remember the infinite 
suffering that happened even in this beloved country; it is difficult 
for me to remember the delegations from weak peoples that came to 
me in Paris, figuratively speaking, with outstretched hands, pleading 
that America should lead the way out of the darkness into the light : 
it is difficult out here in this great peace for anybody, even. I dare 
say, for these fine fellows in khaki who were over there and saw some- 
thing of it, to remember the whole strain and terror of the thing, but 
we must remember it, my fellow citizens, and we must see to it that 
that strain and terror never come upon the world again. It is with 
this solemn thought, that we are at a turning point in the destinies 
of mankind and that America is the makeweight of mankind, that I. 
with perfect confidence, leave this great question to your unbiased 
judgment. 



ADDRESS AT SPOKANE, WASH., 

SEPTEMBER 12, 1919. 



Mr. Mayor, my fellow countrymen, I esteem it a real privilege to 
stand face to face with a representative audience of this great city, 
because I have come away from Washington, my fellow countrymen, 
not to make speeches but to get into contact with just such bodies of 
men and women as this, and feel that I have exchanged ideas with 
them, and with the utmost frankness of which I was capable. I have 
not come to paint pictures of the fancy. I have come to disclose to you 
what I understand to be facts, and I want so much as possible to get 
down to the very essence and marrow of the things that we are now 
talking about. 

I do not think I need tell you, my fellow citizens, that America and 
the world have come to the point where they must make one of the 
\^most critical choices ever made by great bodies of men or by nations. 
They have now to determine whether they will accept the one chance 
that has ever been offered to insure the peace of the world. I call it 
frankly a chance to insure the peace of the world. Nobody can 
guarantee the world against the ugly passions that sometimes get 
abroad. Nobody can engage that the world will not again go mad 
with blood ; but I want to put it frankly to you : Though the chance 
should be poor, is it not worth taking a chance? Let men discount 
the proposed arrangements as much as they will; let us regard it as 
an insurance policy. If you could get 10 per cent insurance of your 
fortunes in respect of peace, wouldn't you rather take it than no in- 
surance at all? As a matter of fact, I believe, after having sat in 
conference with men all over the world and found the attitude of 
their minds, the character of their purposes, that this is a 99 per cent 
insurance against war. If the nations of the world will indeed and in 
truth accept this great covenant of a league of nations and agree to 
put arbitration and discussion always first and war always last, I say 
that we have an immense insurance against war, and that is exactly - 
what this great covenant does. 

I have found it necessary upon this trip, my fellow citizens — I have 
actually found it necessary — to tell great audiences what the treaty 

165 



166 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

of peace contains. You never could divine it from the discussion of 
the men who are opposed to it. Let me tell you some of the things 
that this treaty does, apart from the covenant of the league of 
nations which stands by common consent of those who framed it at 
the beginning of it. Quite apart from the league of nations, it is the 
first attempt ever made by an international congress to substitute 
^/justice for national advantage. It is the first attempt ever made to 
settle the affairs of the world according to the wishes of the people 
in the parts of the world that were being dealt with. It is a treaty 
that deals with peoples and nations, and not with dynasties and 
governments. Every representative of every great Government I 
met on the other side of the sea acknowledged, as I, of course, 
acknowledge, that he was master of nobody, that he was the servant 
of the people whom he represented, and that the people he repre- 
sented wanted what the people of the United States wanted; they 
wanted a just and reasonable and permanent settlement, and that is 
what this treaty tried to give them. If substitutes for the aggression, 
which always was the beginning of war, a settled title on the part 
of the weak nations, along with the strong, to their own territories, 
a settled right to determine their own policies, a settled right to 
realize the national hopes so long suppressed, to free themselves from 
the oppression so long endured. Europe was full of people under 
the iron and relentless hand of military power, and that hand has 
been removed and crushed. This treaty is the means of doing it. 

The guaranty of this treaty is the part of the covenant of nations 
which you have heard most criticized. I mean the now celebrated 
article 10. Article 10 is an engagement of the most extraordinary 
kind in history. It is an engagement by all the fighting nations of 
the world never to fight upon the plan upon which they always 
fought before. They, all of them, agree to respect and preserve 
against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing 
political independence of the others, and they agree that if there 
should be any breach of that covenant, the council of the league 
shall advise what steps shall be taken to make the promises good. 
That is the covenant with which you have been frightened. Fright- 
ened, my fellow citizens ? Why, it is the only possible or conceivable 
guaranty against the wars that have ravaged the world, because 
those wars have habitually begun by territorial aggression, by the 
seizure of territory that did not belong to the power that was ef- 
fecting the seizure. How did this great war begin? It began by 
the invasion of Belgium, and it was admitted by all German states- 
men that they never meant to get out of Belgium. By guaranteeing 
the territorial integrity of a country, you do not mean that you 
guarantee it against invasion. You guarantee it against the invader 
staying there and keeping the spoils. The integrity is the title, is 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 167 

the ownership. You agree never to take territory away from the 
people to whom it belongs, and you agree never to interfere with 
the political independence of the people living in these territories 
whose titles are now made clear by a universal international guar- 
anty. 

I want to discuss with you very frankly, indeed, just as frankly 
as I know how, the difficulties that have been suggested, because T 
say, not in the spirit of criticism, but in a spirit of entire intended 
fairness, that not one of the qualifications which have been suggested 
in this discussion is justified by the language of the instrument. Let 
me take them one by one. In the first article of the covenant of the 
league it is provided that any member State may withdraw from the 
league upon two years' notice, provided at the time of withdrawal it 
has fulfilled its international obligations and its obligations under the 
covenant. Gentlemen object that it is not said who shall determine 
whether it has fulfilled its international obligations and its obligations 
under the covenant or not. Having sat at the table where the instru- 
ment was drawn, I know that that was not by accident, because that 
is a matter upon which no nation can sit in judgment upon another. 
That is left to the conscience and the independent determination of 
the nation that is withdrawing, and there is only one jury that it need 
fear and that is the great embodied jury expressing the opinion of 
mankind. I want to differentiate myself, therefore, from the men 
who are afraid of that clause, because I want to record my feeling 
in the matter that, as an American, I am never afraid that the United 
States will fail to perform its international obligations: and, being 
certain that it will never fail in that respect, I have no fear that an 
occasion will arise when we need be sensitive to the opinion of man- 
kind. That is the only jury set up in the case, and I am ready to go 
before that jury at any time. These gentlemen want to say what 
the instrument says, that we can withdraw when we please. The 
instrument does not say it in those words, but it says it in effect, and 
the only limitation upon that is that we should not please unless we 
have done our dut}^. We never will please, God helping us, to neglect 
our duty. 

The second difficulty — taking them in the order in which they have 
come in the covenant itself — is the article I was a moment ago dis- 
cussing, article 10. Article 10, as I told you, says that if the promise 
to respect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial 
integrity and existing political independence of the member States is 
broken, then the council shall advise what is to be done. I do not 
know any but one meaning for the word " advise." I have been very 
curious and interested to learn how many other meanings have been 
put into it. I, in my surprise, have looked in the dictionary to be sure 



168 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 






I was not mistaken, and so far as I can find out " advise " means 
" advise." And more interesting than that, the advice can not be 
given without the affirmative vote of the United States. There must 
be a unanimous vote of the council before there is advice, and the 
United States is a member of the council by the constitution of the 
league itself, a member now and always a member, so that neither the 
United States nor any other country can be advised to go to war for 
the redemption of that promise without the concurrent affirmative 
vote of the United States. Yet I hear gentlemen say that this is an 
invasion of our sovereignty. My fellow citizens, if it is anything, it 
is an exaggeration of our sovereignty, because it puts our sovereignty 
in a way to put a veto on that advice being given to anybody. Our 
present sovereignty merely extends to making choice whether we will 
go to war or not, but this extends our sovereignty to saying whether 
other nations shall go to war or not. If that does not constitute a 
very considerable insurance against war, I would like somebody to 
write a provision which would; because, at every point, my fellow 
citizens, the position of these gentlemen who criticize this instrument 
is either that they do not understand the covenant or that they can 
suggest something better, and I have not heard one of them suggest 
anything better. In fact, I have never heard of them suggest 
anything. If the world is going to be at peace, it must be this or 
something better, and I want to say again it is a case of " put up or 
shut up." 

Let me make a slight digression here, if I may, to speak about a 
matter of some delicacy. I have had a great many men say to me, 
"I am a Eepublican, but I am in favor of the league of nations." 
Why the " but." I want to tell you, my fellow citizens, that there 
is one element in this whole discussion which ought not to be in it. 
There is, though I say it myself, an element of personal bitterness. 
One would suppose that this covenant of the league of nations was 
first thought of and first invented and first written by a man named 
Wilson. I wish it were. If I had done that, I would be willing to 
have it recorded that I had done that and nothing else. But I did 
not do it. I, along with thousands of my fellow countrymen, got the 
idea 20 years ago, chiefly from Eepublican public men. Take men 
like ex-Senator Burton, of Ohio. He has been preaching a league of 
nations for 20 years. I do not want to mention names, because I do 
not want to record gentlemen against themselves, but go through the 
list and you will find most of the leading, thinking minds on the Ee- 
publican side in favor of this very kind of thing, and I want to re- 
mind every Eepublican of the criticism that he and his comrades 
have usually made of the Democratic Party, and the boast that they 
have generally made of their party. They said that the Democratic 
Party was a party of negations and not a party of constructive 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 169 

policies, an,d that the Republican Party was a party of constructive 
policy. Very well, then, why that " but." "lama Republican, but I 
am in favor of the greatest constructive thing that has ever been 
suggested ! " If I were a Republican, I would say, "lama Repub- 
lican and therefore I ain in favor of a league of nations." My present 
point is to dissociate the league of nations from the present speaker. 
I did not originate it. It is not my handiwork. It has originated 
out of the consciences and thought of men who wanted justice and 
loved peace for generations, and my relationship to it is just what my 
relationship ought to be to every public question, the relationship 
which a man bears to his fellow citizens when he tries to interpret 
their thought and their conscience. That is what I conceive to be 
my part in the league of nations. I did have a part in some of 
the phraseology, and every time I did it was to carry out the ideas 
that these gentlemen are fighting for. 

For example, there is one part of the covenant, the principal part 
of it, where it speaks of arbitration and discussion, where it provides 
that any member State, failing to keep these particular covenants, 
shall be regarded as thereby ipso facto to have committed an act of 
war against the other members. The way it originally read was, 
" Shall thereby ipso facto be deemed at war with the other mem- 
bers," and I said, "No; I can not agree to that. That provision 
would put the United States at war without the consent of the Con- 
gress of the United States, and I have no right in this part of the 
covenant or any other to assent to a provision which would deprive 
the Congress of the United States of its free choice whether it makes 
war or not." There, and at every other point in the covenant where 
it was necessary to do so, I insisted upon language which would leave 
the Congress of the United States free, and yet these gentlemen say 
that the Congress of the United States is deprived of its liberty. I 
fought that battle and won it. It is not necessary for them to fight 
it over again. 

You will say, " It is all very well what you say about the vote of 
the United States being necessary to the advice provided the United 
States is not one of the parties to the dispute. In that case it can 
not vote." That is very true; but in that case it has got the fight on 
its hands anyhow, because if it is one of the parties to the dispute the 
war belongs to it. It does not have to go into it, and therefore it 
can not be forced by the vote of the United States in the council to 
go into the war. The only thing the vote can do is to force it out 
of the war. I want to ask you to think what it means when it is sug- 
gested that the United States may be a party. A party to what? 
A party to seizing somebody else's territory ? A party to infringing 
some other country's political independence ? Is any man willing to 
stand on this platform and say that the United States is likely to do 



170 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

either of those things? I challenge any man to stand up before 
an American audience and say that that is the danger. "Ah, but 
somebody else may seek to seize our territory or impair our political 
independence." Well, who? Who has an arm long enough, who 
has an audacity great enough to try to take a single inch of American 
territory or to seek to interfere for one moment with the political 
independence of the United States ? These gentlemen are dreaming 
of things that can not happen, and I can not bring myself to feel 
uneasy in the presence of things that I know are not so. The great 
difficulty in this discussion, as in so many others, is in the number 
of things that men know that are not so. 

" But the Monroe doctrine." I must admit to you, my fellow citi- 
zens, I do not know how the Monroe doctrine could be any more ex- 
plicitly accepted than it is in the covenant of the league of nations. 
It says that nothing in the covenant shall be interpreted as impairing 
the validity of the Monroe doctrine. What more could you say? I 
did try while I was in Paris to define the Monroe doctrine and get it 
written into the document, but I will confide to you in confidence that 
when I tried to define it I found that it escaped analysis, that all that 
you could say was that it was a principle with regard to the inter- 
ference of foreign powers in the politics of the Western Hemisphere 
which the United States felt at liberty to apply in any circumstances 
where it thought it pertinent. That is not a definition. That means 
that the United States means to play big brother to the Western 
Hemisphere in any circumstances where it thinks it wise to play big 
brother. Therefore, inasmuch as you could not or would not define 
the Monroe doctrine — at least I would not, because I do not know 
how much we may want to extend it — what more could you say than 
that nothing in that instrument shall impair the validity of the Mon- 
roe doctrine ? I tell you, my fellow citizens, that is the most extraor- 
V dinary sentence in that treaty, for this reason : Up to that time there 
was not a nation in the world that was willing to admit the validity 
of the Monroe doctrine. I have made a great many speeches in my 
life, perhaps too many, but I do not think that I ever put so much 
of what I hope was the best in me as I put in the speech in the con- 
ference on the league of nations in favor of the Monroe doctrine, and 
it was upon that occasion that it was embodied. And we have this 
extraordinary spectacle, of the world recognizing the validity of the 
Monroe doctrine. Yet these gentlemen seem to want something more. 
What more could you get ? Shall we get them to express their belief 
in the deity of the Monroe doctrine? They accept it for the first 
time in the history of the world, and they say that they will do noth- 
ing that will interfere with it. I must submit that it is absolutely 
irrational to ask for anything more. 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON". 171 

But there is the question of somebody interfering with the domes- 
tic policies of the United States — immigration, naturalization, tariffs ; 
matters of that sort. There, again, I can not understand or feel the 
weight of the difficulty, because the covenant says that if any inter- 
national difficulty is brought under discussion and one of the 
parties claims and the council finds that it is a matter of domestic 
jurisdiction, the council shall cease to discuss it and shall make no 
report about it. The only way you could make the document more 
clear would be by enumerating the domestic questions you had in 
mind. Very well. I ask any lawyer here if that would be safe? 
Might you not be in danger of leaving out something ? Might you not 
be in danger of not mentioning something that would afterwards 
become important? The danger of making a list is that the mention 
of the things you do mention constitutes the exclusion of the things 
you do not mention. Inasmuch as there is no dispute of any authori- 
tative students of international law that these matters that we are 
most concerned about — immigration, naturalization, tariff, and the 
rest — are domestic questions, it is inconceivable that the council 
should ever seek to interfere with or to discuss such questions, unless 
we had ourselves deliberately made them matters of international 
agreement, and even the opponents of the league admit they would 
be suitable and proper subjects for discussion. 

Those are the matters upon which they are talking about reserva- 
tions. The only reservations I can imagine are reservations which 
say over again what the covenant itself says in plain language, and 
make it necessary that we should go back to Paris and discuss new 
language for things that we all have to admit, if we are frank, are 
already in the document. 

But there is another matter. Somebody has said that this covenant 
was an arrangement for the dominance of Great Britain, and he 
based that upon the fact that in the assembly of the council there are 
six representatives of the various parts of the British Empire. There 
are really more than that, because each member of the assembly has 
three representatives, but six units of the British Empire are repre- 
sented, whereas the United States is represented as only one unit. 
Let me be didactic for a moment and tell you how the league is con- 
stituted. There is an assembly made up of three members of each of 
the constituent States, and there is a council. The council is the only 
part of the organization that can take effective action. No powers 
of action rest with the assembly at all. and it is only in the assembly 
that the British Empire is represented as consisting of six units — 
for brevity's sake I will say as having six votes. There is only one 
case when the assembly can vote at all, and that is when the council 
refers a matter in dispute to the assembly, in which case the assembly 
can decide a matter by a majority, provided all the representatives 



172 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

of the nations represented in the council vote on the side of the 
majority. So that, alike in the assembly and in the council, the one 
vote of the United States is an absolute veto. I have said that there 
was only one case upon which the assembly could vote, and that is 
literally true. The council of the league is made up of one repre- 
sentative from each of the five principal allied and associated powers ; 
that is to say, the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, and 
Japan, and four other nations selected by the assembly of the league. 
The present members are Spain, Brazil, Belgium, and Greece. In 
the council is vested all the active powers of the league. Everything 
that is done by the league is formulated and passed by the coun- 
cil, and a unanimous vote is required. Indeed, my fellow citi- 
zens, that is the only thing that seems to me weak about the league ; 
I am afraid that a unanimous vote will sometimes be very difficult 
to get. The danger is not action, but inaction. The danger is not 
that they will do something that we do not like, but that upon some 
critical occasion they will not do anything. If there is any weakness 
in it, it is the safeguard that has been thrown around the sovereign 
power of the members of the council. If a matter in controversy 
arises and one of the parties demands that it shall be taken out of the 
council and put into the assembly, the council is obliged so to refer it, 
but in the final vote in the assembly the affirmative action is not valid 
unless all the States represented in the council shall also in the assem- 
bly vote in the affirmative. As we can always veto, always offset with 
one vote the British six votes, I must say that I look with perfect 
philosophy upon the difference in number. 

The justification for the representation of more than one part of 
the British Empire was that the British Empire is made up of semi- 
independent pieces, as no other Empire in the world is. You know 
how Canada, for example, passes her own tariff law, does what she 
pleases to inconvenience the trade of the mother country. Canada's 
voice in the assembly is merely a debating force. The assembly is 
a great discussing body. It is a body in which some of the most 
valuable things that the league is going to do can be done, for I 
want to ask you, after you have read article 10 again, to read article 
11. Article 11 makes it the right of any member of the league, however 
weak and small, to call attention to anything, anywhere, that is 
likely to disturb the peace of the world and to draw it into debate, 
draw it into the open, draw it where eveiybody can get the facts and 
talk about it. It is the only time, my fellow countrymen, in the 
history of the world when weak and oppressed and restive peoples 
have been given a hearing before the judgment of mankind. Noth- 
ing is going to keep this world fit to live in like exposing in public 
debate every crooked thing that is going on. If you suspect your 
friend of being a fool, the best way you can prove it or disprove it is 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 173 

by advising him to hire a hall. Then your judgment will be con- 
firmed or reversed by the popular verdict. If you think a policy is 
good, you will venture to talk about it. If you think it is bad, you 
will not consent to talk about it. The league of nations takes every- 
thing into the public. It makes every secret agreement of every kind 
invalid; it provides that no treaty hereafter shall be valid unless 
registered with the secretary of the league and published. And 
after bringing everything into the open, it authorizes the assembly to 
discuss anything that is likely to affect the peace and happiness of 
the world. In every direction you look the safeguards of this treaty 
are thrown around those who are oppressed. 

Unless America takes part in this treaty, my fellow citizens, the 
world is going to lose heart. I can not too often repeat to you how 
deep the impression made upon me upon the other side of the water 
is that this was the Nation upon which the whole world depended 
to hold the scales of justice even. If we fail them, God help the 
world ! Then despair will ensue. Despair is just at the door on that 
side of the water now. Men do not hope in Europe as they hope in 
America. They hope tremblingly. They hope fearfully. They do 
not hope with confidence and self-reliance as we do on this side of 
the water. Everywhere in Europe there is that poison of disorder 
and distrust, and shall we take away from this unsteady world the 
only thing that reassures it? If we do, then where is the boasted 
independence of America? Are we indeed independent in our life 
of the rest of the world ? Then why did we go into the war ? Ger- 
many had not directed her efforts immediately against us. We went 
in because we were partners with mandkind to see that an iniquity 
was not practiced upon it. You know how we regard the men who 
fought the Civil War. They did the greatest thing that was to be 
done in their day. Now, these boys here, and the others like them, 
have done the greatest thing that it was possible to do in our day. 
As their fathers saved the Union, they saved the world, and we sit 
and debate whether we will keep true and finish the job or not ! My 
friends, that debate can not last one minute longer than the moment 
when this country realizes what it means. It means that, having 
sent these men to risk their lives and having sent some, whose 
mothers' hearts can count, to die in France, in order to redeem the 
world, we, in cool debate, in distant assemblies, say we will not 
consent that the world should reap the fruit of their victory ! 
Nothing less than that hangs in the balance. I am ready to fight 
from now until all the fight has been taken out of me by death to 
redeem the faith and promises of the United States. 

I leave the verdict with you, and I beg, my Republican fellow citi- 
zens, that you will not allow yourselves for one moment, as I do not 



f 



174 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

allow myself for one moment, as God knows my conscience, to think 
of 1920 when thinking about the redemption of the world. I beg that 
you will cut that " but " out of your sentences, and that you will stand 
up, as you are entitled to stand up by the history of your party, and 
say, " I am a Republican and therefore I am for the league of nations. " 
I do not admit the indictment which has been brought against the 
Democratic Party, but I do admit the distinguished history of the 
Republican Party ; I do admit that it has been the creator of great 
constructive policies, and I should be very sorry to see it lose the 
prestige which it has earned by such policies. I should be very sorry 
to have any man feel that there was any embarrassment in supporting 
a great world policy because he belonged to a great constructive party, 
and that party a party of America — the constructive force in the 
world, the people who have done the most advanced thinking in the 
world, and the people who, God helping them, will lead and save the 
world. 



ADDRESS AT STADIUM, TACOMA, WASH., 

SEPTEMBER 13, 1919. 



My friends and fellow citizens, it is very delightful to find myself 
in this beautiful spot and very thrilling to find myself surrounded 
by so great a company of my fellow citizens. I can not in these cir- 
cumstances make you a speech, but I can say something from my 
heart. I can say that I am profoundly glad to see you and profoundly 
touched by a welcome like this. I want to express my particular 
interest in this charming circle of school children, because one of the 
thoughts that has been most in my mind recently is that we are making 
decisions now which will mean more to the children than they mean 
to us and that as we care for the future generations we will be careful 
to make the right decisions as to the policy of the United States as 
one of the factors in the peace of the world. I give you my most 
cordial geeting and my most profound thanks for this generous 

welcome. 

175 



ADDRESS AT ARMORY, TACOMA, WASH., 

SEPTEMBER 13, 1919. 



Mr. Mayor, Mr. Chairman, your excellency, my fellow countrymen, 
It is with very great pleasure that I find myself in your presence. 
I have long wanted to get away from Washington and come into 
contact with the great body of my fellow citizens, because I feel, as 
I am sure you feel, that we have reached one of the most critical 
periods in the history of the United States. The shadow of the war 
is not yet lifted from us, my fellow countrymen, and we have just 
come out of the depths of the valley of death. I thought that it 
might be useful if this morning I reminded you of a few things, lest 
we forget. It is so easy, with the strong tides of our life, to be swept 
away from one situation into another and to forget the real depths of 
meaning which lie underneath the things that we are merely touching 
the surface of. Therefore I thought it would not be impertinent on 
my part if I asked permission to read you the concluding passage of 
the address in which I requested the Government of the United States 
to accept Germany's challenge of war : 

" We shall fight," I said, " for the things which we have always 
carried nearest our hearts, for democracy, for the right of those who 
submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the 
rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of 
right by such a concert of free peoples as will bring peace and safety 
to all nations and make the world itself at last free. To such a task 
we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are 
and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that 
the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and 
lier might for the principles that gave her birth and the happiness 
and the peace which we have treasured. God helping her, she can 
do no other." 

That is the program we started out on. That is the program 
which all America adopted without respect of party, and shall we 
now hesitate to cany it out? Shall we now falter at the very critical 
moment when we are finally to write our name to the standing- 
pledge which we then took? I want to remind you, my fellow citi- 
141677— S. Doc. 120. 66-1 12 177 



J 78 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

zeng, that many other nations were put under a deeper temptation 
than we. It would have been possible for little Belgium at any time 
to make terms with the enemy. Belgium was not prepared to resist. 
Belgium knew that resistance was useless. Belgium knew that she 
could get any term of advantage from Germany she pleased, if she 
would only submit, and at the cost of everything that she had Bel- 
gium did nothing less than underwrite civilization. I do not know 
anywhere in history a more inspiring fact than that. I have seen the 
fields of Belgium. I have seen great spaces swept of cities and 
towns as clean as if there had never been anything there except piles 
of stone ; and, farther in, in that beautiful country, the factories are 
standing, the houses there, but everything that could be useful taken 
out of the factories; the machinery taken out and shipped to Ger- 
many, because Germany feared the competition of the skillful Bel- 
gians, and where it was too bulky to take away it was destroyed 
under the direction of experts — not broken to pieces, but the very 
part that made it impossible to use it without absolutely destroyed. 
I have been over great plants there that seemed to the eye to have 
much of the substantial machinery left, but experts showed me that 
it could never work again. Belgium lies prostrated because she ful- 
filled her pledge to civilization. Italy could have had her terms with 
Austria at almost any period of the war, particularly just before she 
made her final stand at the Piave River, but she would not compound 
with the enemy. She, too, had underwritten civilization. And, my 
friends, this passage that I have read you, which the whole country 
accepted as its pledge, is an underwriting of civilization. 

In order to let you remember what the thing cost, just let me read 
you a few figures. If I did not have them on official authority I 
would deem them incredible. Here is what the war cost. These 
figures do not include what the different powers loaned each other; 
they are direct war costs: 

It cost Great Britain and her dominions $38,000,000,000; France, 
$26,000,000,000; the United States, $22,000,000,000; Russia, $18,000,- 
000,000 ; Italy, $13,000,000,000 ; a total, including Japan, Belgium, and 
other countries, of $123,000,000,000. It cost the Central Powers: 
Germany, $39,000,000,000; Austria-Hungary, $21,000,000,000; Tur- 
key and Bulgaria, $3,000,000,000 ; a total of $63,000,000,000. A grand 
total of direct war costs of $186,000,000,000— an incredible sum— to 
save civilization. Now, the question is, Are we going to keep it 
saved? The expenditures of the United States were at the rate of 
$1,000,000 an hour, including the nighttime, for two years. 

The battle deaths — and this is the cost that touches our hearts — 
were: Russia, 1,700,000; Germany, 1,600,000; France, 1,380,000; 
Great Britain, 900,000; Austria, 800,000; Italy, 364,000; the United 
States. 50,300 dead. A total for all belligerents of 7,450,200 men dead 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 179 

on the field of battle ! Seven and a hall million ! The totals for the 
wounded are not obtainable at present, but the number of torn and 
wounded for the United States Army was 230,000, excluding, of 
course, those who were killed. The total of all battle deaths in all 
the wars of the world from the year 1793 to 1914 was something 
under 6,000,000 ; in all the wars of the world for more than 100 years 
fewer men died than have been killed upon the field of battle in the 
last five years. These are terrible facts, my fellow citizens, and we 
ought never to forget them. We went into this war to do a thing 
that was fundamental for the world, and what I have come out upon 
this journey for is to ascertain whether the country has forgotten it 
or not. I have found out already. The country has not forgotten, 
and it never will permit any man who stands in the way of the fulfill- 
ment of these great pledges ever to forget the sorrowful day when he 
made the attempt. 

I read you these figures in order to emphasize and set in a higher 
light, if I may, the substitute which is offered to us, the substitute for 
war, the substitute for turmoil, the substitute for sorrow and despair. 
That substitute is offered in the covenant of the league of nations. 
America alone can not underwrite civilization. All the great free 
peoples of the world must underwrite it, and only the free peoples of 
the world can join the league of nations. The membership is open 
only to self-governing nations. Germany is for the present excluded, 
because she must prove that she is self-governing ; she must prove that 
she has changed the processes of her constitution and the purposes of 
her policy ; but when she has proved these things she can become one 
of the partners in guaranteeing that civilization shall not suffer again 
the intolerable thing she attempted. It is not only a union of free 
peoples to guarantee civilization ; it is something more than that. It- 
is a league of nations to advance civilization by substituting some- 
thing that will make the improvement of civilization possible. 

I call you to witness, my fellow citizens, that our present civiliza- 
tion is not satisfactory. It is an industrial civilization, and at the 
heart of it is an antagonism between those who labor with their hands 
and those who direct labor. You can not compose those differences 
in the midst of war, and you can not advance civilization unless you 
have a peace of which you make the peaceful and healing use of bring- 
ing these elements of civilization together into a common partnership, 
in which every man will have the same interest in the work of his com- 
munity that those have who direct the work of the community. We 
have got to have leisure and freedom of mind to settle these things. 
This was a war against autocracy; and if you have disorder, if you 
have disquieted populations, if you have insurgent elements in your 
population, you are going to have autocracy, because the strongest is 
going to seize the power, as it has seized it in Eussia. I want to de- 



v ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

elare that I am an enemy of the rulership of any minority, however 
constituted, Minorities have often been right and majorities wrong, 
but minorities cease to be right when they use the wrong means to 
make their opinions prevail. TTe must have peaceful means : we must 
have discussion — we must have frank discussion, we must have 
friendly discussion — and those are the very things that are offered to 
us among the nations of the world by the covenant of the league of 
nations. 

I can not too often remind my fellow citizens of what the real heart 
and center of that covenant is. It lies in the provisions by which every 
member of the league — and. mind you. that means every great nation 
in the world, except, for the time being. Germany — solemnly engages 
never to go to war without first having either submitted the subject 
to arbitration — in which case it agrees to abide absolutely by the ver- 
dict — or submitted it for discussion to the council of the league of 
nations, laying all the documents, all the facts, before that council: 
consenting that the council shall publish all the facts, so as to take the 
world into its confidence for the formation of a correct judgment con- 
cerning it : it agrees that it will allow six months for the deliberation 
of the council upon the facts, and that, after those deliberations are 
concluded, if the advice of the council is not acceptable, it will still not 
go to war for three months after the rendering of that opinion. In 
other words, we have the pledge of all the nations of the world that 
they will sit down and talk everything over that is apt to make trouble 
amongst them, and that they will talk it over in public, so that the 
whole illuminating process of public knowledge and public discussion 
may penetrate every part of the conference. I believe, for my part, 
that that is a 99 per cent insurance against war. I take it you want 
some insurance against war rather than none, and if it is not 99 per 
cent. I dare say you would like 10 per cent. You would like some in- 
surance rather than none at all. and the experience of the world 
demonstrates that this is an almost complete insurance. 

My fellow citizens, imagine what would have happened if there 
had been a league of nations in 1914. What did happen was this : 
Some time after the Crown Prince of Austria had been assassinated 
in Serbia, after the world had begun to forget even so tragical an in- 
cident, the Austrian Government was prompted by the Government 
at Berlin to make that the occasion for war. Their thought was. 
" TTe are ready. The others are not. Before they can mobilize, be- 
fore they can bring this matter even under discussion, we will be at 
their gates. Belgium can not resist. We have promised, solemnly 
promised, not to cross her territories, but promises are scraps of 
paper. TTe will get across her territories into France before France 
can mobilize. We will make that assassination a pretext." They 
therefore made unconscionable demands of Serbia, and. not with- 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 181 

standing the fact that Serbia, with her sense of helplessness, prac- 
tically yielded to all those demands, they would not even tell the 
world that she had yielded; they went on with the war. In the 
meantime every foreign office Avas telegraphing to its representative 
at Berlin, begging that there might be an international conference 
to see if a settlement could not be effected, and Germany did not 
dare sit down in conference. It is the common judgment of every 
statesman I met on the other side of the water that if this thing had 
been delayed and discussed, not six months, but six days, it never 
could have happened. 

Here we have all the Governments of the world agreeing to discuss 
anything that is likely to bring about war, because, after that famous- 
article 10 there is an article 11 — there are 26 articles altogether, al- 
though you are not told about any of them except article 10 — and 
article 11 says that it shall be the friendly right of any member of 
the league, big or little, to bring to the attention of the league — and,, 
therefore, to the attention of the world — anything, anywhere, which 
is likely to disturb the peace of the world or to disturb the good un- 
derstanding between nations upon which the peace of the world de- 
pends. Wherever there are oppressed nations, wherever there are 
suffering populations, wherever there is a smoldering flame, the 
trouble can be uncovered and brought to the bar of mankind, and the 
whole influence of public opinion the world over will be brought to 
bear upon it. It is the greatest process of international conference 
and of international discussion ever conceived, and that is what we 
are trying to substitute for war. That is what we must substitute 
for war. 

Then, not in immediate connection with the league of nations cove- 
nant but in a later part of the treaty, there is what I have ventured 
to call the Magna Charta of labor. There is the provision for the 
constant regular international discussion of labor problems, no mat- 
ter where they arise in the world, for the purpose of lifting the whole 
level of labor conditions ; for the purpose of safeguarding the health 
of women and of children, for the sake of bringing about those in- 
ternational comities with regard to labor upon which the happiness 
of mankind so much depends. There is a heart in the midst of the 
treaty. It is not only made by prudent men but it is made by men 
with hearts under their jackets. I have seen the light of this thing 
in the eyes of some men whom the world deemed cynical. I have 
seen men over there, whose emotions are not often touched, with 
suffused eyes when they spoke of the purposes of this conference, be- 
cause they realized that, for the first time in the history of mankind, 
statesmen had got together, not in order to lay plans for the ag- 
grandizement of governments but in order to lay plans for the libera- 
tion of peoples: and what I want everybody in every American audi- 



182 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

ence to understand is this: The first effective impulse toward this 
sort of thing came from America, and I want to call your attention 
to the fact that it came from some of the very men who are now op- 
posing its consummation. They dreamed the dream that has now 
been realized. They saw the vision 20, 25, 30 years ago which all man- 
kind are now permitted to see. It is of particular importance to 
remember, my fellow citizens, a£ this moment when some men have 
dared to introduce party passion into this question, that some of the 
leading spirits, perhaps I may say the leading spirits, in the con- 
ception of this great idea were the leading figures of the great Re- 
publican Party. I do not like to mention parties in this discussion. 
I hope that there is not a real thoughtful, conscientious person in 
the United States who will determine his or her opinion about this 
matter with any thought that there is an election in the year 1920. 
And, just because I want you to realize how absolutely nonpartisan 
this thing is, I want you to forget, if you please, that I had anything 
to do with it. I had the great privilege of being the spokesman of 
this splendid Nation at this critical period in her history, but I was 
her spokesman, not my own, and when I advocated the things that 
are in this league of nations I had the full and proud consciousness 
that I was only expressing the best thought and the best conscience 
of my beloved fellow countrymen. The only things that I have any 
special personal connection with in the league of nations covenant 
are things that I was careful to have put in there because of the very 
considerations which are now being urged. I brought the first draft 
of the covenant of the league of nations over to this country in March 
last. I then held a conference of the frankest sort with the Foreign 
Relations Committee of the Senate. They made a number of sug- 
gestions as to alterations and additions. I then took all of those 
suggestions back to Paris, and every one of them, without exception, 
was embodied in the covenant. I had one or two hard fights to get 
them in. 

You are told, my fellow citizens — it is amazing that anybody 
should say it — that the covenant does not satisfactorily recognize 
the Monroe doctrine. It says in so many words that nothing in that 
covenant shall be construed as impairing the validity of the Monroe 
doctrine. The point is that up to that conference there was not a 
nation in the world that could be induced to give official recogni- 
tion to the Monroe doctrine, and here in this great turn of the tides 
of the world all the great nations of the world are united in recog- 
nizing the Monroe doctrine. It not only is not impaired, but it has 
the backing of the world. And at every point where suggestions 
were made they were accepted; and the suggestions came for the 
most part from the Republican side of the committee. I say that 
because I am particularly interested, my fellow citizens, to have you 



ADDKESSES OF PEESIDENT WILSON. 183 

realize that there is no politics in this business, except that pro- 
foundly important politics, the politics of civilization. I have the 
honor to-day of speaking under a chairman who, I understand, is 
a member of the Republican Party, and every meeting that I have 
spoken at on this trip, so far as I remember, has been presided over 
by a Republican. I am saying these things merely because I want 
to read the riot act to anybody who tries to introduce politics. 

Some very interesting things happened while we were on the other 
side of the water. One of the most distinguished lawyers in the 
United States, Mr. Wickersham, of New York, who was the Attor- 
ney General in Mr. Taft's Cabinet, came over to Europe, I am told— 
I did not see him while he was over there — to oppose the things 
that he understood the American peace commission was trying to 
accomplish, and what happened to Mr. Wickersham? He was ab- 
solutely converted, above all things else, to the necessity for a league 
of nations not only, but for this league of nations. He came back 
to the United States and has ever since, in season and out of season, 
been preaching in public advocacy of the adoption of this covenant. 
I need not tell you of the conspicuously fine work which his chief, 
Mr. Taft, has been doing in the same cause. I am very proud, my 
fellow citizens, to be associated with these gentlemen. I am very 
proud to forget party lines, because there is one thing that is so 
much greater than being a Republican or a Democrat that those 
names ought never to be mentioned in connection with, and that 
is being an American. There is only one way to be an American, 
and that is to fulfill the pledges that we gave the world at our birth, 
that we have given the world at every turn in our history, and that 
we have just now sealed with the blood of some of our best young 
men. 

Ah, my fellow citizens, do not forget the aching hearts that are 
behind discussions like this. Do not forget the forlorn homes from 
which those boys went and to which they never came back. I have 
it in my heart that if we do not do this great thing now, every woman 
ought to weep because of the child in her arms. If she has a boy at 
her breast, she may be sure that when he comes to manhood this 
terrible task will have to be done once more. Everywhere we go, the 
train when it stops is surrounded with little children, and I look at 
them almost with tears in my eyes, because I feel my mission is to 
save them. These glad youngsters with flags in their hands— I pray 
God that they may never have to carry that flag upon the battle field ! 

There have been, if I may make a slight digression, some very 
amusing incidents on this journey. At Billings a number of boys 
were chasing the train as it pulled slowly out with flags and yelling 
all sort of pleasant things to their friend u Woody." On this occasion 
one youngster in his enthusiasm insisted that I should take his flag 



184 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON". 

and he handed it up to me. The boy next to him did not have a flag- 
and he looked a good deal disconcerted for a moment, but then he 
put his hand in his pocket and said, " Here, I will give you a dime." 
I would like to believe that that dime has some relation to the widow's 
mite — others gave something; he gave all that he had. After all,, 
though that is merely a passing incident, it is illustrative of the spirit 
of this country, my fellow citizens. There is something in this coun- 
try that is not anywhere else in the world. There is a confident look- 
ing forward to better times. There is a confidence that we can work 
out the most difficult problems. There is none of that heavy leaden 
discouragement that rests upon some other countries. Have you 
never crossed the sea in times of peace and noticed the immigrants 
who^ were going back to visit their folks, and then, on the return voy- 
age, the immigrants who were coming in for the first time — the ex- 
traordinary contrast in the appearance of the two groups? The 
group going out, having felt the atmosphere of America, their faces 
bright, a sort of a sense of initiative about it, having been freed to 
be men and individuals ; and those coming back, bearing all sorts of 
queer bundles, looking a bit anxious, just a little doubtful of the hope 
with which they are looking forward to the new country. It is the 
alchemy, the miracle of America, and it is the only country in the 
world, so far as my observation goes, where that miracle is wrought, 
and the rest of the world knows that. The rest of the world implores 
America's aid — not her material aid; they are not looking for our 
dollars ; they are not looking for our guns. They are saying, " Show 
us the road that led you out of the wilderness and made you great, 
for we are seeking that road." Now that the great treaty of peace 
has established the oppressed peoples of the world who were affected 
by this treaty on their own territory, given them their own freedom, 
given them command of their own affairs, they are looking to 
America to show them how to use that new liberty and that new 
power. 

When I was at that wonderful stadium of yours a few minutes 
ago, a little child, a little girl in white, came and presented me with 
some kind of a paper — I have not had time to read it yet — from the 
Poles. I dare say that it is of the sort that I have received a great 
many of — just an expression of a sort of childlike and pitiful thanks 
that America assisted to free Poland. Poland never could have 
freed herself. We not only tore Germany's hands away from where 
she meant to make ravage of the rights of the others, but we 
took those old peoples who had been under her power before and 
said, " You could not free yourselves, but we believe in liberty. 
Here is your own land to do with as you please." I wish that some 
of the men who are opposing this treaty could get the vision in their 
hearts of all it has done. It has liberated great populations. It 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 185 

has set up the standards of right and of liberty for the first time, 
where they were never unfurled before, and then has placed back of 
them this splendid power of the nations combined. For without the 
league of nations the whole thing is a house of cards. Just a breath 
of power will blow it down. Whereas with the league of nations 
it is as strong as Gibraltar. Let them catch this vision; let them 
take in this conception ; let them take counsel of weeping mothers ; 
let them take counsel of bereaved fathers who used to have their 
sons at their sides and are now alone; let them take counsel of the 
lonely farms where there used to be a boy to help the old man and 
now he can not even get a hired man to help him, and yet he is trying 
to feed the world; let them realize that the world is hungry, that 
the world is naked, that the world is suffering, and that none of these 
things can be remedied until the minds of men are reassured. That 
is the fundamental fact, my fellow citizens. 

If I wanted to have a joint debate with some man who wanted to 
put our part in this business down on the lowest possible level of 
how much money we were going to make out of it, I could silence 
there will be nothing to pay for anything with, that unless its in- 
dustries will not begin again, that unless its industries begin again, 
there will be nothing to pay for any thing with, that unless its in- 
dustries begin again there will be no market for the goods of Amer- 
ica, and that we will have to rest content with our domestic markets 
at the very time when we had enlarged our enterprises in order to 
make peaceful conquest of the world. The very processes of war 
have driven our industries to a point of expansion where they will 
be chilled and ruined if they do not presently get a foreign outlet. 
Therefore, on the lowest basis, you have got to guarantee and under- 
write civilization or you have ruined the United States. But I do 
not like to talk about that side of it. I believe in my heart that there 
is hardly a man in America, if you get really back of his superficial 
thoughts, who is not man enough to be willing to make the sacrifice 
to underwrite civilization. It is only sacrifice that tells. Don't you 
remember what we used to cry during the Liberty loans," " Lend 
until it hurts. Give until it hurts." When I heard, in some Western 
States, that people drew their savings out of banks that were giving 
them 4 per cent on the savings and invested them in the first Liberty 
loan that was to yield them 3-| per cent, I said to myself, " That is 
America." They were helping the Government at a sacrifice. They 
were not thinking of dollars. They were thinking of the dignity 
and might and majesty and destiny of the United States, and it is 
only that vision, my fellow citizens, that will ever lift us out of the 
slough in which men now are wading. 

It is a pitiful spectacle that the great bodies of our fellow citi- 
zens should be arrayed against each other. One of the most start- 



186 ADDKESSES OF PKESIDENT WILSON. 

ling things that I ever realized was, months and months ago, when 
I was trying to moderate and assist in settling some of the difficulties 
between the railroads and their employees. I asked the representa- 
tives of the railway brotherhoods to come to the White House, and I 
asked the presidents of the great railway systems to come to the 
White House, and I found that each side had a profound suspicion 
of the other, that the railway presidents were not willing to trust 
what their men said and the men were not willing to trust what the 
railway presidents said. When I took over the railroads in the 
name of the Government, I said to a group of fine-spirited men, a 
group of railway presidents, who were trying to unify the adminis- 
tration of the railroads for the purposes of the war — I said, smil- 
ingly, but with a little sadness, " Well, at any rate, gentlemen, these 
men will trust me, and they do not trust you." I did not say it with 
pride; I said it with sorrow. I did not know whether I could justify 
their trust or not, but I did know that I was willing to talk things 
over with them whenever anything was the matter, and that if we 
were equally intelligent and equally conscientious we could get to- 
gether whenever anything went wrong. I could not help suspecting 
that this distrust, this mutual distrust, was the wedge that was being 
driven into society, and society can not live with a great wedge at 
the heart of it. Society can not get on industrially or socially with 
any such wedge driven into its heart. We must see that the proc- 
esses of peace, the processes of discussion, the processes of fairness, 
the processes of equity, the processes of sympathy penetrate all our 
affairs. I have never known anybody who had a good cause who 
was unwilling to discuss it. Whenever I find a man standing out 
stiffly against consulting with the other side, I know his case is bad. 
The only unconquerable thing in the world is the truth, and a man 
who has the truth on his side need not be afraid of anybody. You 
know what witty and eloquent old Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes once 
said. He said, " You needn't fear to handle the truth roughly ; she 
is no invalid." The truth is the most robust and indestructible and 
formidable thing in the world. There is a very amusing story of a 
distinguished lawyer at Charleston, S. C, of a very much older gen- 
eration than ours, who was followed out of the court one day after 
losing a civil suit by his client, who abused him. He called him a 
thief and a liar and everything that was disagreeable, and Mr. Ped- 
digrew paid not the slightest attention to him, until he called him a 
Federalist, and then he knocked him down. A friend said to him, 
"Why, Mr. Peddigrew; why did you knock him down for that? 
That was the least offensive thing he said." "Yes, damn him," 
Peddigrew said, "but it was the only true thing he said." 

Now, the nations of the world have declared that they are not 
afraid of the truth; that they are willing to have all their affairs 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 187 

that are likely to lead to international complications brought into 
the open. One of the things that this treaty incidentally does is 
absolutely to invalidate all secret treaties. Everything is to be open. 
Everything is to be upon the table around which sit the representa- 
tives of all the world, to be looked at from the point of view of 
everybody — the Asiatic, the African, the American, the European. 
That is the promise of the future; that is the security of the future. 
I hope that no attempts will be made to qualify or embarrass the 
great process which is inevitable, and I confidently predict that some 
day we shall look back with surprise upon the fact that men in 
America, above all places, should ever have hesitated to do this 
great thing. 

It has been a privilege, my fellow citizens, to make this simple 
presentation of a great theme to you, and I am happy in carrying 
away with me recollections of the generous response you have made 
to a plea which I can only characterize as a plea which has come 
from the heart of a true American. 



ADDRESS AT HIPPODROME, SEATTLE, WASH. 

SEPTEMBER 13, 1919. 



Mr. Spangler, ladies, and gentlemen, it was agreed that I should 
make no address on this occasion, and I am not going to inflict upon 
you anything that can bear so dignified a name; but when Mr. 
Spangler asked me if I would extend a word of greeting to you I 
at once thought of the wonderful greeting that you and your fel- 
low citizens have extended to me, and it would indeed be ungracious 
if I did not say how much I have appreciated your welcome and 
how delightful it is to be associated with you even for a few hours 
in this great city of Seattle. 

I have been in Seattle before, when I attracted less attention. I 
admired the city then, as I admire it still, and I could see it better 
then than I have seen it to-day. To-day I had too much of an escort 
to be really able to see the new features of the city with which I 
was not familiar. I was reminded of some of our experiences on 
the other side of the water, when we had to be careful not to let 
anybody know we were coming to a particular place for fear Ave 
would be escorted by so many persons that we would not see the 
place; and I have found in Washington that I am not to see the 
interesting things in Washington until my term is over, because all 
the officials in public buildings feel it necessary to escort me all over 
the buildings, and I either see the things that I did not care to see, 
because they insist upon it, or I see nothing. 

But, jesting aside, my fellow citizens, it was very delightful to see 
so many friendly faces on these beautiful streets. What I liked 
about it was not so much the cheers as the facial expressions that 
accompanied the cheers. They made me feel' really welcome, and I 
could only fancy and hope that it was the reflection in their faces 
of the way I felt toward them. I suppose that a man in public life 
must renew himself constantly by direct contact with his fellow 
citizens, get the feel of the great power of opinion and of sentiment 
in this country, and nothing else heartened me so much as I have 
crossed the continent as to feel the uniformity of impulse and senti- 
ment from one ocean to the other. There is no essential division in 
the thought or purpose of the American people, and the interesting 
thing to me is their steadiness. No amount of debate will set them 

189 



190 ADDKESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

off their balance in their thinking, because their thinking is based 
upon fundamental impulses of right, and what they want to know 
is not the difficulties, but the duties ahead of them, and if you point 
the duties out to them they have a contempt for the difficulties. It 
is that consciousness which I have so often gained in moving from 
one part of this beloved country to another that makes me so pro- 
foundly proud to be an American. It was not, indeed, my choice to 
be an American, because I was born here, and I suppose that I can 
not ascribe any credit to myself for being an American; but I do 
claim the profoundest pleasure in sharing the sentiments and in 
having had the privilege for a few short years of trying to express 
the sentiments of this free Nation, to Avhich all the world looks for 
inspiration and leadership. 

That is the dominating thought that I have. I will not say the 
dominating thought ; it is the controlling knowledge that I have, for 
I learned to know on the other side of the water that all the world 
was looking to us for inspiration and leadership, and we will not 
deny it to them. 



ADDRESS AT ARENA, SEATTLE, WASH., 

SEPTEMBER 13, 1919. 



Mr. Chairman, my fellow countrymen, I esteem it a privilege to 
have the occasion to stand before this great audience and expound 
some part of the great question that is now holding the attention of 
America and the attention of the world. I was led to an unpleasant 
consciousness to-day of the way in which the debate that is going 
on in America has attracted the attention of -the world. I read in 
to-day's papers the comment's of one of the men who were recently 
connected with the Imperial Government of Germany. He said that 
some aspects of this debate seemed to him like the red that precedes 
a great dawn. He saw in it the rise of a certain renewed sympathy 
with Germany. He saw in it an opportunity to separate America 
from the Governments and peoples with whom she had been asso- 
ciated in the war against German aggression. And all over this 
country, my fellow citizens, it is becoming more and more evident 
that those who were the partisans of Germany are the ones who are 
principally pleased by some of the aspects of the debate that is now 
going on. The world outside of America is asking itself the ques- 
tion, " Is America going to stand by us now, or is it at this moment 
of final crisis going to draw apart and desert us?" I can answer 
that question here and now. It is not going to draw apart and it is 
not going to desert the nations of the world. America responds to 
nothing so quickly or unanimously as a great moral challenge. It is 
much more ready to carry through what now lies before it than it 
was even to carry through what was before it when we took up arms 
in behalf of the freedom of the world. America is unaccustomed to 
military tasks, but America is accustomed to fulfilling its pledges 
and following its visions. The only thing that causes me uneasiness, 
my fellow countrymen, is not the ultimate outcome, but the impres- 
sions that may be created in the meantime by the perplexed delay. 
The rest of the world believed absolutely in America and was ready 
to follow it anywhere, and it is now a little chilled. It now asks, 
" Is America hesitating to lead ? We are ready to give ourselves to 

her leadership. Why tv ill she not accept the gift?" 

191 



192 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

My fellow citizens, I think that it is my duty, as I go about the 
country, not to make speeches in the ordinary acceptance of that word, 
not to appeal either to the imagination or to the emotion of my fellow 
citizens, but to undertake everywhere what I want to undertake 
to-night, and I must ask you to be patient while I undertake it. I 
want to analyze for you what it is that it is proposed we should do. 
Generalities will not penetrate to the heart of this great question. It 
is not enough to speak of the general purposes of the peace. I want 
you to realize just what the covenant of the league of nations means. 
I find that everywhere I go it is desirable that I should dwell upon 
this great theme, because in so many parts of the country men are 
drawing attention to little details in a way that destroys the whole 
perspective of the great plan in a way that concentrates attention 
upon certain particulars which are incidental and not central. I am 
going to take the liberty of reading you a list of the things which the 
nations adhering to the covenant of the league of nations undertake. 
I want to say by way of preface that it seems to me, and I am sure it 
will seem to you, not only an extraordinarily impressive list, but a 
list which was never proposed for the counsels of the world before. 

In the first place, every nation that joins the league, and that in 
prospect means every great fighting nation in the world, agrees to 
submit all controversies which are likely to lead to war either to 
arbitration or to thorough discussion by an authoritative body, the 
council of the league of nations. These great nations, all the most 
ambitious nations in the world except Germany, all the most power- 
ful nations in the world, as well as the weak ones — all the nations 
that we have supposed had imperialistic designs — say that they will 
do either one or other of two things in Case a controversy arises 
which can not be settled by ordinary diplomatic correspondence : 
They will either frankly submit it to arbitration and absolutely abide 
by the arbitral verdict or they will submit all the facts, all the 
documents, to the council of the league of nations, will give the 
council six months in which to discuss the whole matter and leave 
to publish the whole matter, and at the end of the six months will still 
refrain for three months more from going to war, whether they like 
the opinion of the council or not. In other words, they agree to do 
a thing which would have made the recent war with Germany abso- 
lutely impossible. If there had been a league of nations in 1914, 
whether Germany belonged to it or not, Germany never would have 
dared to attempt the aggression which she did attempt, because she 
would have been called to the bar of the opinion of mankind and 
would have known that if she did not satisfy that opinion mankind 
would unite against her. You had only to expose the German case 
to public discussion and make it certain that the German case would 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 193 

fall, Germany not dare attempt to act upon it. It was the universal 
opinion on the other side of the water when I was over there that if 
Germany had thought that England would be added to France and 
Russia she never would have gone in, and if she had dreamed that 
America would throw her mighty weight into the scale it would 
have been inconceivable. The only thing that reassured the deluded 
German people after we entered the war was the lying statement of 
her public men that we could not get our troops across the sea, be- 
cause Germany knew if America got within striking distance the 
story was done. Here all the nations of the world, except Germany, 
for the time being at any rate, give notice that they will unite against 
any nation that has a bad case, and they agree that in their own case 
they will submit to prolonged discussion. 

There is nothing so chilling as discussion to a hot temper. If you 
are fighting mad and yet I can induce you to talk it over for half an 
hour, you will not be fighting mad at the end of the half hour. I 
knew a very wise schoolmaster in North Carolina who said that if 
any boy in that school fought another, except according to the rules, 
he would be expelled. There would not be any great investigation; 
the fact that he had fought would be enough; he would go home; 
but if he was so mad that he had to fight, all he had to do was to 
come to the head master and tell him that he wanted to fight. The 
head master would arrange the ring, would see that the fight was 
conducted according to the Marquis of Queensberry rules, that 
an umpire and a referee were appointed, and that the thing was 
fought to a finish. The consequence was that there were no fights 
in that school. The whole arrangement was too cold-blooded. By 
the time all the arrangements had been made all the fighting audac- 
ity had gone out of the contestants. That little thing illustrates a 
great thing. Discussion is destructive when wrong is intended; 
and all the nations of the world agree to put their case before the 
judgment of mankind. Why, my fellow citizens, that has been the 
dream of thoughtful reformers for generation after generation. 
Somebody seems to have conceived the notion that I originated the 
idea of a league of nations. I wish I had. I would be a very proud 
man if I had; but I did not. I was expressing the avowed aspira- 
tions of the American people, avowed by nobody so loudly, so intelli- 
gently, or so constantly as the greater leaders of the Republican 
Party. When Republicans take that road, I take off my hat and 
follow ; I do not care whether I lead or not. I want the great result 
which I know is at the heart of the people that I am trying to serve. 

In the second place, all these great nations agree to boycott any 
nation that does not submit a perilous question either to arbitration 
or to discussion, and to support each other in the boycott. There is 

141677— S. Doc. 120, 66-1 13 



194 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

no " if " or " but " about that in the covenant. It is agreed that 
just so soon as that member State, or any outside State, for that 
matter, refuses to submit its case to the public opinion of the world 
its doors will be closed and locked ; that nobody shall trade with it, 
no telegraphic message shall leave it or enter it, no letter shall cross 
its borders either way; there shall be no transactions of any kind 
between the citizens of the members of the league and the covenant- 
breaking State. That is the remedy that thoughtful men have ad- 
vocated for several generations. They have thought, and thought 
truly, that war was barbarous and that a nation that resorted to war 
when its cause was unjust was unworthy of being consorted with by 
free people anywhere. The boycott is an infinitely more terrible 
instrument of war. Excepting our own singularly fortunate coun- 
try, I can not think of any other country that can live upon its own 
resources. The minute you lock the door, then the pinch of the 
thing becomes intolerable ; not only the physical pinch, not only the 
fact that you can not get raw materials and must stop your factories, 
not only the fact that you can not get food and your people must 
begin to starve, not only the fact that your credit is stopped, that 
your assets are useless, but the still greater pinch that comes when 
a nation knows that it is sent to Coventry and despised. To be put 
in jail is not the most terrible punishment that happens to a con- 
demned man ; if he "knows that he was justly condemned, what pene- 
trates his heart is the look in other men's eyes. It is the soul that 
is wounded much more poignantly than the body, and one of the 
things that the German nation has not been able to comprehend 
is that it has lost for the time being the respect of mankind ; and as 
Germans, when the doors of truth were opened to them after the 
war, have begun to realize that they have begun to look aghast at 
the probable fortunes of Germany, for if the world does not trust 
them, if the world does not respect them, if the world does not want 
Germans to come as immigrants any more, what is Germany to do? 
Germany's worst punishment, my fellow citizens, is not in the treaty ; 
it is in her relations with the rest of mankind for the next genera- 
tion. The boycott is what is substituted for war. 

In the third place, all the members of this great association pledge 
themselves to respect and preserve as against external aggression the 
territorial integrity and existing political independence of the other 
member States. That is the famous article 10 that you hear so much 
about ; and article 10, my fellow citizens, whether you want to assume 
the responsibility of it or not, is the heart of the pledge that we have 
made to the other nations of the world. Only by that article can 
we be said to have underwritten civilization. The wars that threaten 
mankind begin by that kind of aggression. For every other nation 
than Germany, in 1914, treaties stood as solemn and respected cove- 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 195 

nants. For Germany they were scraps of paper, and when her first 
soldier's foot fell upon the soil of Belgium her honor was forfeited. 
That act of aggression, that failure to respect the territorial integrity 
of a nation whose territory she was specially bound to respect, 
pointed the hand along that road that is strewn with graves since 
the beginning of history, that road made red and ugly with the strife 
of men, the strife behind which lies savage cupidity, the strife behind 
which lies a disregard for the rights of others and a thought con- 
centrated upon what you want and mean to get. That is the heart of 
war, and unless you accept article 10 you do not cut the heart of war 
out of civilization. 

Belgium did not hesitate to underwrite civilization. Belgium 
could have had safety on her own terms if only she had not resisted 
the German arms — little Belgium, helpless Belgium, ravaged Bel- 
gium. Ah, my fellow citizens, I have seen some of the fields of 
Belgium. I rode with her fine, democratic king over some of thos3 
fields. He would say to me, "This is the. village of so and so," and 
there was no village there, just scattered stones all over the plain, 
and the plain dug deep every few feet with the holes made by explod- 
ing shells. You could not tell whether it was the earth thrown up or 
the house thrown down that made the debris which covered the 
desert made by the war. Then we rode farther in, farther to the 
east, where there had been no fighting, no active campaigning, and 
there we saw beautiful green slopes and fields that had once been 
cultivated, and towns with their factories standing, but standing 
empty; not empty of workers merely, empty of machinery. Every 
piece of machinery in Belgium that they could put on freight cars 
the Germans had taken away, and what they could not carry with 
them they had destroyed, under the devilishly intelligent direction 
of experts — great bodies of heavy machinery that never could be used 
again, because somebody had known where the heart of the machine 
lay and where to put the dynamite. The Belgians are there, their 
buildings are there, but nothing to work with, nothing to start life 
with again; and in the face of all that Belgium did not flinch for 
a moment to underwrite the interests of mankind by saying to Ger- 
many, " We will not be bought." 

Itaty could have had more by compounding with Austria in the 
later stages of the war than she is going to get out of the peace set- 
tlement now, but she would not compound. She also was a trustee 
for civilization, and she would not sell the birthright of mankind for 
any sort of material advantage. She underwrote civilization. And 
Serbia, the fiurst of the helpless nations to be struck down, her armies 
driven from her own soil, maintained her armies on other soil, and 
the armies of Serbia were never dispersed. Whether they could be 



196 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

on their own soil or not, they were fighting for their rights and 
through their rights for the rights of civilized man. 

I believe that America is going to be more willing than any other 
nation in the world, when it gets its voice heard, to do the same 
thing that these little nations did. Why, my fellow citizens, we 
have been talking constantly about the rights of little nations. There 
is only one way to maintain the rights of little nations, and that is by 
the strength of great nations. Having begun this great task, we are 
no quitters ; we are going to see the thing through. The red that this 
German counsellor of state saw upon the horizon was not the red of 
any dawn that will reassure the people who attempted the wrong that 
Germany did. It was the first red glare of the fire that is going to 
consume the wrong in the world. As that moral fire comes creeping 
on, it is going to purify every field of blood upon which free men 
sacrificed their lives ; it is going to redeem France, redeem Belgium, 
redeem devastated Serbia, redeem the fair lands in the north of 
Italy, and set men on their feet again, to look fate in the face and 
have again that hope which is the only thing that leads men forward. 

In the next place, every nation agrees to join in advising what shall 
be done in case any one of the members fails to keep that promise. 
There is where you have been misled, my fellow citizens. You have 
been led to believe that the council of the league of nations could say 
to the Congress of the United States, " Here is a war, and here is 
where you come in." Nothing of the sort is true. The council of the 
league of nations is to advise what is to be done, and I have not been 
able to find in the dictionary any meaning of the word " advise," 
except " to advise." But let us suppose that it means something else; 
let us suppose that there is some legal compulsion behind the advice. 
The advice can not be given except by a unanimous vote of the council 
and an affirmative vote of the United States. We will be a permanent 
member of the council of the league of nations, and no such advice is 
ever going to be given unless the United States votes " aye," with one 
exception. If we are parties to the dispute, we can not vote ; but, nry 
fellow citizens, let me remind you that if we are parties to the dispute, 
we are in the war anyhow, so that we are not forced into war by the 
vote of the council, we are forced into war by our quarrel with the 
other party, as we would be in any case. There is no sacrifice in the 
slightest degree of the independent choice of the Congress of the 
United States whether it will declare war or not. There is a peculiar 
impression on the part of some persons in this country that the United 
States is more jealous of its sovereignty than other countries. That 
provision was not put in there because it was necessary to safeguard 
the sovereignty of the United States. All the other nations wanted 
it, and they were just as keen for their veto as we were keen for our 
reto. There is not the slightest danger that they will misunderstand 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 197 

that article of the covenant. There is only a clanger that some of us 
who are too credulous will be led to misunderstand it. 

All the nations agree to join in devising a plan for general dis- 
armament. You have heard that this covenant was a plan for 
bringing on war. Well, it is going to bring on war by means of 
disarmament and also by establishing a permanent court of interna- 
tional justice. When I voted for that, I was obeying the mandate 
of the Congress of the United States. In a very unexpected place, 
namely, in a naval appropriation bill passed in 1915, it was de- 
clared to be the polic}^ of the United States to bring about a general 
disarmament by common agreement, and the President of the United 
States was requested to call a conference not later than the close of 
the then present war for the purpose of consulting and agreeing upon 
a plan for a permanent court of international justice; and he was 
authorized, in case such an agreement could be reached, to stop the 
building program provided for by that naval appropriation bill. 
The Congress of the United States deliberately not only accepted but 
directed the President to promote an agreement of this sort for dis- 
armament and a permanent court of international justice. You 
know what a permanent court of international justice implies. You 
can not set up a court without respecting its decrees. You can not 
make a toy of it. You can not make a mockery of it. If you, indeed, 
want a court, then you must abide by the judgments of the court. 
And we have declared already that we are willing to abide by the 
judgments of a court of international justice. 

All the nations agree to register every treaty, and they agree that 
no treaty that is not registered and published shall be valid. All 
private agreements and secret treaties are swept from the table, and 
thereby one of the most dangerous instruments of international in- 
trigue a /id disturbance is abolished. 

They agree to join in the supervision of the government of helpless 
and dependent people. They agree that no nation shall hereafter 
have the right to annex any territory merely because the people that 
live on it can not prevent it, and that instead of annexation there 
shall be trusteeship, under which these territories shall be adminis- 
tered under the supervision of the associated nations of the world. 
They lay down rules for the protection of dependent peoples of that 
sort, so that they shall not have enforced labor put upon them, so that 
their Avomen and children shall be protected from unwholesome and 
destructive forms of labor, so that they will be kept away from the 
opium traffic and the traffic in arms. They agree that they will never 
levy armies there. They agree, in other words, to do what no nation 
ever agreed to do before, to treat subject nations like human beings. 

They agree also to accord and maintain fair and humane condi- 
tions of labor for men, women, and children born in their own coun- 



J 



1/ 



198 ADDRESSES OE PRESIDENT WILSON. 

tries and in all other countries to which their commercial and indus- 
trial relations extend, and for that purpose they agree to join in 
establishing and maintaining the necessary international organiza- 
tion. This great treaty, which we are hesitating to ratify, contains 
the organization by which the united counsels of mankind shall 
attempt to lift the levels of labor and see that men who are working 
with their hands are everywhere treated as they ought to be treated, 
upon principles of justice and equality. How many laboring men 
dreamed, when this war began, that four years later it would be pos- 
sible for all the great nations of the world to enter into a covenant 
like that? They agree to intrust the league with the general super- 
vision of all international agreements with regard to traffic in women 
and children and traffic in opium and other dangerous drugs. They 
agree to intrust the league with the general supervision of the trade 
in arms and ammunition with the countries in which the control of 
this traffic is necessary in the common interest. They agree to join 
in making provision to secure and maintain freedom of communica- 
tion and of transit and equitable treatment for commerce in respect 
of all the members of the league. They agree to cooperate in the. 
endeavor to take steps for the prevention and control of disease. 
They agree to encourage and promote the establishment and co- 
operation of duly authorized voluntary national Red Cross organi- 
zations for the improvement of health, the prevention of disease, 
and the mitigation of suffering throughout the world. 

I ask you, my fellow citizens, is that not a great peace document 
and a great human document? And is it conceivable that America, 
the most progressive and humane nation in the world, should refuse 
to take the same responsibility upon herself that all the other great 
nations take in supporting this great covenant ? You say, " It is not 
likely that the treaty will be rejected. It is only likely that there will 
be certain reservations." Very well, I want very frankly to tell you 
what I think about that. If the reservations do not change the treaty,, 
then it is not necessary to make them part of the resolution of rati- 
fication. If all that you desire is to say what you understand the 
treaty to mean, no harm can be done by saying it ; but if you want 
to change the treaty, if you want to alter the phraseology so that the 
meaning is altered, if you want to put in reservations which give the 
United States a position of special privilege or a special exemption 
from responsibility among the members of the league, then it will be 
necessary to take the treaty back to the conference table, and, my 
fellow citizens, the world is not in a temper to discuss this treaty over 
again. The world is just now more profoundly disturbed about social 
and economic conditions than it ever was before, and the world de- 
mands that we shall come to some sort of settlement which will let 
u> aet down to business and purify and rectifv our own affairs. This 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 199 

is not only the best treaty that can be obtained, but I want to say, 
because I played only a small part in framing it, that it is a sound 
and good treaty, and America, above all nations, should not be the 
nation that puts obstacles in the way of the peace of nations and the 
peace of mind of the world. 

The world has not anywhere at this moment, my fellow citizens, 
peace of mind. Nothing has struck me so much in recent months as 
the unaccustomed anxiety on the face of people. I am aware that men 
do not know what is going to happen, and that they know that it is 
just as important to them what happens in the rest of the world, al- 
most, as what happens in America. America has connections with 
all the rest of the world not only, but she has necessary dealings with 
all the rest of the world, and no man is fatuous enough to suppose that 
if the rest of the world is disturbed and disordered, the disturbance 
and disorder are not going to extend to the United States. The center 
of our anxiety, my fellow T citizens, is in that pitiful country to which 
our hearts go out, that great mass of mankind whom we call the Rus- 
sians. I have never had the good fortune to be in Russia, but I know 
many persons who know that lovable people intimately, and they all 
tell me that there is not a people in the world more generous, more 
simple, more kindly, more naturally addicted to friendship, more 
patiently attached to peace than the Russian people. Yet, after throw- 
ing off the grip of terror that an autocratic power of the Czar had 
upon them, they have come under a terror even greater than that ; they 
have come under the terror of the power of men whom nobody knows 
bow to find. One or two names everybody knows, but the rest is 
intrigue, terror, informing, spying, and military power, the seizure 
of all the food obtainable in order that the fighting men may be fed 
and the rest go starved. These men have been appealed to again and 
again by the civilized Governments of the world to call a constituent 
assembly, let the Russian people say what sort of government the}^ 
want to have ; and they will not, they dare not, do it. That picture 
is before the eyes of every nation. Shall we get into the clutch of 
another sort of minority? My fellow citizens, I am going to devote 
every influence I have and all the authority I have from this time on 
to see to it that no minority commands the United States. [Great and 
continued applause.] It heartens me, but it does not surprise me, to 
know that that is the verdict of every man and woman here ; but, my 
fellow citizens, there is no use passing that verdict unless we are going 
to take part, and a great part, a leading part, in steadying the counsels 
of the world. Not that we are afraid of anything except the spread 
of moral defection, and moral defection can not come except where 
men have lost faith, lost hope, have lost confidence ; and, having seen 
the attitude of the other peoples of the world toward America, I 



200 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

know that the whole world will lose heart unless America consents to 
show the way. 

It was pitiful, on the other side of the sea, to have delegation 
after delegation from peoples all over the world come to the house 
I was living in in Paris and seek conference with me to beg that 
America would show the way. It was touching. It made me very 
proud, but it made me very sad ; proud that I was the representative 
of a nation so regarded, but very sad to feel how little of all the 
things that they had dreamed we could accomplish for them. But 
we can accomplish this, my fellow citizens: We can, having taken a 
pledge to be faithful to them, redeem the pledge. We shall redeem 
the pledge. I look forward to the day when all this debate will seem 
in our recollection like a strange mist that came over the minds of 
men here and there in the Nation, like a groping in the fog, having 
lost the way, the plain way, the beaten way, that America had made 
for itself for generations together: and we shall then know that of a 
sudden, upon the assertion of the real spirit of the American people, 
they came to the edge of the mist, and outside lay the sunny coun- 
try where every question of duty lay plain and clear and where the 
great tramp, tramp of the American people sounded in the ears of 
the whole world, which knew that the armies of God were on 
their wav. 



ADDRESS AT LUNCHEON, HOTEL PORTLAND, PORT- 

LAND, OREG., 

SEPTEMBER 15, 1919. 



Mr. Jackson, ladies and gentlemen, as I return to Portland I 
can not help remembering that I learned a great deal in Oregon. 
When I was a teacher I used to prove to my own satisfaction — I 
do not know whether it was to the satisfaction of my classes or not— 
that the initiative and referendum would not work. I came to Ore- 
gon to find that they did work, and have since been apologizing 
for my earlier opinion. Because I have always taken this attitude 
toward facts, that I never let them get me if I see them coming 
first. There is nothing I respect so much as a fact. There is noth- 
ing that is so formidable as a fact, and the real difficulty in all po- 
litical reform is to know whether you can translate your theories 
into facts or not, whether you can safely pick out the operative 
ideas and leave aside the inoperative ideas. For I think you will all 
agree with me that the whole progress of human affairs is the prog- 
ress of ideas ; not of ideas in the abstract form, but of ideas in the 
operative form, certain conceptions of justice and of freedom and 
of right that have got into men's natures and led those natures to 
insist upon the realization of those ideas in experience and in 
action. 

The whole trouble about our civilization as it looks to me, is that 
it has grown complex faster than we have adjusted the simpler ideas 
to the existing conditions. There was a time when men would do in 
their business what they would not do as individuals. There was a 
time when they submerged their individual consciences in a corpora- 
tion and persuaded themselves that it was legitimate for a corpora- 
tion to do what they individually never would have dreamed of do- 
ing. That is what I mean by saying that the organization becomes 
complex faster than our adjustment of the simpler ideas of justice 
and right to the developing circumstances of our civilization. I say 
that because the errand that I am on concerns something that lies 
at the heart of all progress. I think we are all now convinced that 
Ave have not reached the right and final organization of our indus- 
trial society; that there are many features of our social life that 

201 



202 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

ought to undergo correction ; that while we call ourselves democrats — 
with a little ; ' d " — while we believe in democratic government, we 
have not seen vet the successful way of making our life in fact demo- 
cratic ; that we have allowed classes to disclose themselves ; that AYe 
have allowed lines of cleavage to be run through our community, so 
that there are antagonisms set up that breed heat, because they breed 
friction. The world must have leisure and order in which to see that 
these things are set right, and the world can not have leisure and 
order unless it has a guaranteed peace. 

For example, if the United States should conceivably — I think 
it inconceivable — stay out of the league of nations, it would stay 
out at this cost : We would have to see, since we were not going to 
join our force with other nations, that our force was formidable 
enough to be respected by other nations. We would have to main- 
tain a great Army and a great Navy. We would have to do some- 
thing more than that : We would have to concentrate authority suf- 
ficiently to be able to use the physical force of the Nation quickly 
upon occasion. All of that is absolutely antidemocratic in its in- 
fluence. All of that means that we should not be giving ourselves 
the lesiure of thought or the release of material resources necessary 
to work out our own methods of civilization, our own methods of in- 
dustrial organization and production and distribution; and our 
problems are exactly the problems of the rest of the world. I am 
more and more convinced, as I come in contact with the men who 
are trying to think for other countries as we are trying to think for 
this one, that our problems are identical, only there is this differ- 
ence : Peoples of other countries have lost confidence in their Gov- 
ernments. Some of them have lost confidence in their form of gov- 
ernment, That point, I hope and believe, has not been reached in 
the United States. We have not lost confidence in our Government. 
I am not now speaking of our administration ; I am now thinking of 
our method of government. We believe that we can manage our 
own affairs and that we have the machinery through which we can 
manage our oayii affairs, and that no clique or special interest is 
powerful enough to run away with it. The other countries of the 
world also believe that about us. They believe that we are success- 
fully organized for justice, and they therefore want us to take the 
lead and they want to follow the lead. If we do not take the lead, 
then we throw them back upon things in which they have no con- 
fidence and endanger a universal disorder and discontent in the 
midst of which it will be impossible to govern our own affairs with 
success and with constant achievement. Whether you will or not, 
our fortunes are tied in with the rest of the world, and the choice 
that Ave have to make now is whether we will receive the influences 
of the rest of the world and be affected by them or dominate the in- 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 203 

fluences of the world and lead them. That is a tremendous choice 
to make, but it is exactly that tremendous choice that we have to 
make, and I deeply regret the suggestions which are made on some 
sides that we should take advantage of the present situation in the 
world but should not shoulder any of the responsibility. Do you 
know of any business or undertaking in which you can get the ad- 
vantage without assuming the responsibility? What are you going 
to be ? Boys running around the circus tent and peeping under the 
canvas? Men declining to pay the admission and sitting on the roof 
and looking on the game? Or are you going to play your responsible 
part in the game, knowing that you are trusted as leader and um- 
pire both? 

Nothing has impressed me more, or impressed me more painfully, if 
I may say so, than the degree in which the rest of the world trusts us 
and looks to us. I say " painfully " because I am conscious that they 
are expecting more than we can perform. They are expecting miracles 
to be wrought by the influence of the American spirit on the affairs of 
the world, and miracles can not be wrought. I have again and again 
recited to my fellow citizens on this journey how deputations from 
peoples of every kind and every color and every fortune, from all over 
the world, thronged to the house in which I was living in Paris to ask 
the guidance and assistance of the United States. They did not send 
similar delegations to anybody else, and they did not send them to me 
except because they thought they had heard in what I had been saying 
the spirit of the American people uttered. Moreover, you must not 
forget this, that almost all of them had kinsmen in America. You 
must not forget that America is made up out of all the world and 
that there is hardly a race of any influence in the world, at any rate 
hardly a Caucasian race, that has not scores and hundreds, and some- 
times millions, of people living in America with whom they are in 
correspondence, from whom they receive the subtle suggestions of 
what is going on in American life, and of the ideals of American life. 
Therefore they feel that they know America from this contact they 
have had with us, and they want America to be the leading force in 
the world. Why, I received delegations there speaking tongues that 
I did not know anything about. I did not know what family of 
languages they belonged to, but fortunately for me they always 
brought an interpreter along who could speak English, and one of 
the significant facts was that the interpreter was almost always some 
young man who had lived in America. He did not talk English to me ; 
he talked American to me. So there always seemed to be a little link 
of some sort tying them up with us, tying them up with us in fact, 
in relationship, in blood, as well as in life, and the world will be 
turned back to cynicism if America goes back on it. 



204 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

We dare not go back on it. I ask you even as a business proposition 
whether it is more useful to trade with a cynic or with an optimist. 
I do not like to trade with a man with a grouch. I do not like to trade 
with a man who begins by not believing anything I am telling him. 
1 like to trade with a man who is more or less susceptible to the 
eloquence which I address to him. A salesman has a much longer job 
if he approaches a grouch than if he approaches a friend. This 
trivial illustration illustrates, my fellow citizens, our relation to the 
rest of the world. If we do not do what the rest of the world expects 
of us, all the rest of the world will have a grouch toward America, 
and you will find it a hard job to reestablish your credit in the world. 
And back of financial credit lies mental credit. There is not a bit of 
credit that has not got an element of assessment of character. You do 
not limit your credit to men who can put up the collateral, who have 
the assets: you extend it also to the men in whose characters and 
abilities you believe: you think they are going to make good. Your 
credit is a sort of bet on their capacity, and that is the largest element 
in the kind of credit that expands enterprise. The credit that merely 
continues enterprise is based upon asset and past accomplishment, but 
the credit that expands enterprise is based upon your assessment of 
character. If you are going to put into the world this germ, I shall 
call it, of American enterprise and American faith and American 
vision, then you must be the principal partners in the new partnership 
which the world is forming. 

I take leave to say, without intending the least disrespect to any- 
body, that, consciously or unconsciously, a man who opposes that 
proposition either has no imagination or no knowledge, or is a quitter. 
America has put her hand to this great enterprise already, in the men 
she sent overseas, and their part was the negative part merely. They 
were sent over there to see that a malign influence did not interfere 
with the just fortunes of the world. They stopped that influence, 
but they did not accomplish anything constructive, and what is the 
use clearing the table if you are going to put nothing on it I What is 
the use clearly the ground if you are not going to erect any building? 
What is the use of going to the pains that Ave went to. to draw up the 
specifications of the new building and then saying, " We will have 
nothing to do with its erection " ? For the specifications of this treaty 
were American specifications, and we have got not only to be the 
architects, drawing up the specifications, but we have got to be the 
contractors, too. Isn't it a job worth while? Isn't it worth while, 
now that the chance has at last come, in the providence of God, that 
we should demonstrate to the world that America is what she claimed 
that she was? Every drop of blood that I have in me gets up and 
shouts when I think of the opportunity that America has. 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 205 

I come of a race that, being bred on barren hills and unfertile plains 
in Scotland, being obliged to work where work was hard, somehow 
has the best zest in what it does when the job is hard, and I was 
repeating to my friend, Mr. Jackson, what I said the other day about 
my ancestry and about the implications of it. I come of a certain 
stock that raised Cain in the northern part of the larger of the 
British Isles, under the name of the Covenanters. They met in a 
churchyard — they were church people and they had a convention out 
of doors — and on the top of a flat tombstone they signed an immortal 
document called the ; ' solemn league and covenant,'' which meant that 
they were going to stand by their religious principles in spite of the 
Ciown of England and the force of England and every other in- 
fluence, whether of man or the Devil, so long as any of them lived. 
Xow. I have seen men of all nations sit around a table in Paris and 
sign a solemn league and covenant. They have become Covenanters, 
and remain a Covenanter, and I am going to see this job through no 
matter what influence of evil withstand. [Loud applause.] Nothing 
has heartened me more on this journey than to feel that that really 
is the judgment of our fellow citizens. America is made up, as T 
have just said, out of all sorts of elements, but it is a singularly 
homogeneous people after all ; homogeneous in its ideals, not in its 
blood ; homogeneous in the infection which it has caught from a com- 
mon light; homogeneous in its purpose. Every man has a sort of 
consciousness that America is put into the world for a purpose that is 
different in some respects from the purpose conceived by any other 
national organization. 

Throughout America you have got a conducting medium. You do 
not put forth an American idea and find it halted by this man or 
that or the other, except he be particularly asleep or cantakerous, but 
it spreads, it spreads by the natural contact of similar ideas and 
similar ambitions and similar hopes. Eor, my fellow citizens, the 
only thing that lifts the world is hope. The only thing that can save 
the world is such arrangements as will convince the world that hope 
is not altogether without foundation. It is the spirit that is in it 
that is unconquerable. You can kill the bodies of insurgent men 
who are fighting for liberty, but the more of them you kill the more 
you seem to strengthen the spirit that springs up out of the bloody 
ground where they fell. The only thing in the world that is uncon- 
querable is the thought of men. One looks back to that legendary 
story of the Middle Ages, in which certain men who were fighting 
under one of the semisavage chiefs of that obscure time refused to 
obey the order of their chief because they considered it inconsistent 
with the traditions of their tribe, and he said, " Don't you know that 
I have the power to kill you? " They said, "Yes; and don't you 
know that we have the power to die cursing you ? ' : You can not cut 



206 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

our spirits out. You can not do anything but lay our bodies low and 
helpless. If you do, there will spring up, like dragon's teeth out of 
the earth, armed forces which will overcome you. 

This is the field of the spirit here in America. This is the field of 
the single unconquerable force that there is in the world, and when 
the world learns, as it will learn, that America has put her whole 
force into the common harness of civilization, then it will know that 
the Avheels are o-oino- to turn, the loads are o'oma* to be drawn, and men 
are going to begin to ascend those difficult heights of hope which 
have sometimes seemed so inaccessible. I am glad for one to 
have lived to see this day. I have lived to see a day in which, after 
saturating myself most of my life in the history and traditions of 
America, I seem suddenly to see the culmination of American hope 
and history — all the orators seeing their dreams realized, if their 
spirits are looking on ; all the men who spoke the noblest sentiments 
of America heartened with the sight of a great Nation responding to 
and acting upon those dreams, and saying, "At last, the world knows 
America as the savior of the world ! " 



ADDRESS AT AUDITORIUM, PORTLAND, OREG., 

SEPTEMBER 15, 1919. 



Mr. Chairman, Mr. Irvine, my fellow countrymen, Mr. Irvine 

very eloquently stated exactly the errand upon which I have come. 
I have come to confer, face to face, with you on one of the most 
solemn occasions that have ever confronted this Nation. As I have 
come along through the country and stopped at station after station, 
the first to crowd around the train have almost always been little 
children, bright-eyed little boys, excited little girls, children all seem- 
ing sometimes of the same generation, and I have thought as I looked 
upon them from the car platform that, after all, it was they to whom 
I had come to report ; that I had come to report with regard to the 
safety and honor of subsequent generations of America, and I felt 
that if I could not fulfill the task to which I had set my hand, I 
would have to say to mothers with boy babies at their breast, " You 
have occasion to weep ; you have occasion to fear. The past is only 
a prediction of the future, and all this terrible thing that your 
brothers and husbands and sweethearts have been through may have 
to be gone through with again." Because, as I was saying to some of 
your fellow citizens to-day, the task, that great and gallant task, 
which our soldiers performed is only half finished. They prevented 
a great wrong. They prevented it with a spirit and a courage and 
with an ability that will always be written on the brightest pages 
of our record of gallantry and of force. I do not know when I have 
been as proud, as an American, as when I have seen our boys deploy 
on the other side of the sea. On Christmas Day last, on an open 
stretch of country, I saw a great division march past me, with all the 
arms of the service, walking with that swing which is so familiar to 
our eyes, with that sense of power and confidence and audacity which 
is so characteristic of America, and I seemed to see the force that had 
saved the world. But they merely prevented something. They 
merely prevented a particular nation from doing a particular, un- 
speakable wrong to civilization, and their task is not complete unless 
we see to it that it has not to be done over again, unless we fulfill 
the promise which we made to them and to ourselves that this was 
not only a war to defeat Germany, but a war to prevent the recur- 

207 



208 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

rence of any such wrong- as Germany had attempted; that it was 
a war to put an end to the wars of aggression forever. 

There is only one means of doing that, my fellow citizens. I 
found quoted in one of your papers the other day a passage so ap- 
posite that I do not know that I can do better than read it as the 
particular thing that it is now necessary to do: 

" Nations must unite as men unite in order to preserve peace and 
order. The great nations must be so united as to be able to say to 
any single country. * You must not go to war.' and they can say 
that effectively when the country desiring war knows that the force 
which the united nations place behind peace is irresistible. In 
differences between individuals the decision of a court is final, be- 
cause in the last resort the entire force of the community is behind 
the court decision. In differences between nations which go beyond 
the limited range of arbitral questions, peace can only be maintained 
by putting behind it the force of united nations determined to up- 
hold it and prevent war." 

That is a quotation from an address said to have been delivered at 
Union College in June, 1915, a year after the war began, by Mr. 
Henry Cabot Lodge, of Massachusetts. I entirely concur in Senator 
Lodge's conclusion, and I hope I shall have his cooperation in bring- 
ing about the desired result. In other words, the only way we can 
prevent the unspeakable thing from happening again is that the 
nations of the world should unite and put an irresistible force be- 
hind peace and order. There is only one conceivable way to do that, 
and that is by means of a league of nations. The very description 
is a definition of a league of nations, and the only thing that w T e 
can debate now is whether the nations of the world, having met in a 
universal congress and formulated a covenant as the basis for a 
league of nations, we are going to accept that or insist upon another. 
I do not find any man anywhere rash or bold enough to say that he 
doe- not desire a league of nations. I only find men here and there 
saying that they do not desire this league of nations, and I want to 
ask you to reflect upon what that means. And in order to do that 
I wan! to draw a picture for you, if you will be patient with me, of 
what occurred in Paris. 

In Pari- were gathered the representatives of nearly 30 nations 
from all over the civilized globe, and even from some parts of the 
globe which in our ignorance of them we have not been in the habit 
of regarding a- civilized, and out of that great body were chosen the 
representatives of II nation-, representing all parts of the great 
stretches of the people, of the world which the conference as a whole 
represented. The representatives of those 14 nations were constituted 
a commission on the league of nations. The first resolution passed by 
the conference of peace in Paris was a resolution in favor of a league 



ADDRESSES OE PRESIDENT WILSON. 209 

of nations, setting up a commission to formulate a league of nations. 
It was the thought foremost in the mind of every statesman there. 
He knew that his errand was in vain in Paris if he went away with- 
out achieving the formation of a league of nations, and that he 
dared not go back and face his people unless he could report that 
the efforts in that direction had been successful. That commission 
sat clay after day, evening after evening. I had the good fortune to 
be a member of the commission, and I want to testify to the extraor- 
dinary good temper in which the discussions were conducted. I 
want to testify that there was a universal endeavor to subordinate 
as much as possible international rivalries and conflicting interna- 
tional interests and come out upon a common ground of agreement 
in the interest of the world. I want to testify that there were many 
compromises, but no compromises that sacrificed the principle, and 
that although the instrument as a whole represented certain mutual 
concessions, it is a constructive instrument and not a negative instru- 
ment. I shall never lose so long as I live the impression of generous, 
high-minded, statesmanlike cooperation which was manifested in that 
interesting body. It included representatives of all the most power- 
ful nations, as well as representatives of some of those that were less 
powerful. 

I could not help thinking as I sat there that the representatives 
of Italy spoke as it were in the tones of the long tradition of Rome ; 
that Ave heard the great Latin people who had fought, fought, fought 
through generation after generation of strife down to this critical 
moment, speaking now in the counsels of peace. And there sat the 
prime minister of Greece — the ancient Greek people — lending his 
singular intelligence, his singularly high-minded and comprehensive 
counsel, to the general result. There were the representatives also 
of France, our ancient comrade in the strife for liberty. And there 
were the representatives of Great Britain, supposed to be the most 
ambitious, the most desirous of ruling the world of any of the na- 
tions of the world, cooperating with a peculiar interest in the result, 
with a constant and manif estly sincere profession that they wanted to 
subordinate the interests of the British Empire, which extended all 
over the world, to the common interests of mankind and of peace. 
The representatives of Great Britain I may stop to speak of for a 
moment. There were two of them. One of them was Lord Robert 
Cecil, who belongs to an ancient family in Great Britain, some of 
the members of which — particularly Lord Salisbury of a past gener- 
ation — had always been reputed as most particularly keen to seek 
and maintain the advantage of the British Empire; and yet I never 
heard a man speak whose heart was evidently more in the task of 
the humane redemption of the world than Lord Robert Cecil. And 

141677— S. Doc. 120, 66-1 14 



210 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

alongside of him sat Gen. Smuts, the South African Boer, the man 
who had fought Great Britain so successfully that, after the war 
was over and the Boers nominally defeated, Great Britain saw that 
the wisest thing she could do was to hand the government of the 
country over to the Boers themselves. Gen. Botha and Gen. Smuts 
were both members of the peace conference; both had been successful 
generals in fighting the British arms. Nobody in the conference 
was more outspoken in criticizing some aspects of British policy 
than Gen. Botha and Gen. Smuts, and Gen. Smuts was of the same 
mind with Sir Robert Cecil. They were both serving the common 
interests of free people everywhere. You seem to see a sort of 
epitome of the history of the world in that conference. There were 
nations that had long been subordinated and suffering. There were 
nations that had been indomitably free but, nevertheless, not so free 
that they could really accomplish the objects that they had always 
held dear. I want you to realize that this conference was made up 
of many minds and of many nations and of many traditions, keen to 
the same conclusion, with a unanimity, an enthusiasm, a spirit which 
speaks volumes for the future hopes of mankind. 

When this covenant was drawn up in its first form I had the occa- 
sion — for me the very happy occasion — to return for a week or so to 
this country in March last. I brought the covenant in its first draft. 
I submitted it to the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate 
and the Committee on Foreign Affairs in the House. We discussed 
all parts of the document. Many suggestions were made. I took all 
of those suggestions with me back to Paris, and the conference on the 
league of nations adopted every one of the suggestions made. No 
counsels were listened to more carefully or yielded to more willingly 
in that conference than the counsels of the United States. Some 
things were put into the covenant which, personally, I did not think 
necessary, which seemed to me to go without saying, but which they 
had no objection to putting in there explicitly. 

For example, take the Monroe doctrine. As a matter of fact, the 
covenant sets up for the world a Monroe doctrine. What is the 
Monroe doctrine ? The Monroe doctrine is that no nation shall come 
to the Western Hemisphere and try to establish its power or interfere 
Avith the self-government of the peoples in this hemisphere; that no 
power shall extend its governing and controlling influence in any 
form to either of the Americas. Very well; that is the doctrine of 
the covenant. No nation shall anywhere extend its power or seek to 
interfere with the political independence of the peoples of the world ; 
and inasmuch as the Monroe doctrine had been made the universal 
doctrine, I did not think that it was necessary to mention it particu- 
larly, but when I suggested that it was the desire of the United 
States that it should be explicitly recognized, it was explicitly recog- 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 211 

nized, for it is written in there that nothing in the covenant shall be 
interpreted as affecting the validity of the Monroe doctrine. The 
Monroe doctrine is left intact, and the United States is left free to 
enforce it. 

That is only a sample. The members of the Foreign Relations 
Committee and of the Committee on Foreign Affairs did not see it 
anywhere explicitly stated in the covenant that a member of the 
league could withdraw. I told them that the matter had been dis- 
cussed in the commission on the league and that it had been the uni- 
versal opinion that, since it was a combination of sovereigns, any 
sovereign had the right to withdraw from it; but when I suggested 
that that should be explicitly put in, no objection was made what- 
ever, and at the suggestion of the United States it was explicitly 
provided that any member of the league could withdraw. Provision 
was made that two years' notice should be given, which I think 
everybody will recognize as perfectly fair, so that no nation is at 
liberty suddenly to break down this thing upon which the hope of 
mankind rests; but with that limitation and with the provision that 
when they withdraw they shall have fulfilled all their international 
obligations they are perfectly fre? to withdraw. When gentlemen 
dwell upon that provision, that we must have fulfilled all our inter- 
national obligations, I answer all their anxieties by asking them 
another question. " When did America ever fail to fulfill her inter- 
national obligations? v There is no judge in the matter set up in the 
covenant, except the conscience of the withdrawing nation and the 
opinion of mankind, and I for one am proud enough American to 
dismiss from my mind all fear of at any time going before the judg- 
ment of mankind on the conduct of the United States, knowing that 
we will go with clean hands and righteous purpose. 

I am merely illustrating now the provisions that were put in at 
the suggestion of the United .States. Without exception, the sug- 
gestions of the United States were adopted, and I want to say, be- 
cause it may interest you, that most of these suggestions came from 
Republican sources. I say that, my fellow citizens, not because it 
seems to me to make the least difference among Americans in a great 
matter like this which party such things came from, but because I 
want to emphasize in every discussion of this matter the absolutely 
nonpartisan character of the covenant and of the treaty. I am not 
in favor of the ratification of this treaty, including the covenant 
of the league of nations, because I am a Democrat. I am in favor 
of it because I am an American and a lover of humanity. If it will 
relieve anybody's mind, let me add that it is not my work, that prac- 
tically every portion of the covenant of the league of nations ema- 
nates from counsels running back 10, 20, 30 years, among the most 
thoughtful men in America, and that it is the fulfillment of a dream 



212 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

which five years ago, when the war began, would have been deemed 
unattainable. What we are discussing ought not to be disfigured, 
ought not to be tainted, with the least thought of domestic politics. 
It' anybody in this audience allows himself when thinking of this 
matter to think of the elections of 1920 I want to declare that I 
separate myself from him. 

I draw all this picture of the care with which the covenant was 
drawn up, every phrase scrutinized, every interest considered, the 
other nations at the board just as jealous of their sovereignty as we 
could possibly be of ours, and yet willing to harness all of these sover- 
eign! ies in a single great enterprise of peace, and how the whole thing 
was not the original idea of any man in the conference, but had grown 
out of the counsels of hopeful and thoughtful and righteous men all 
ov< r the world: because just as there was in America a league to en- 
force peace, which even formulated a constitution for the league of 
peace before the conference met, before the conference was thought 
of. before the war began, so there were in Great Britain and in 
France and in Italy and, I believe, even in Germany similar associa- 
tion^ of equally influential men, Avhose ideal was that some time there 
might come an occasion when men would be sane enough and right 
enough to get together to do a thing of this great sort. I draw that 
picture in order to show you the other side of what is going on, and 
I want to preface this part by saving that I hope you will not construe 
anything that I say as indicating the least lack of respect for the men 
who are criticizing any portion of this treaty. For most of them, I 
have reason to have respect, for I have come into close contact and 
consultation with them. They are just as good Americans as I claim 
t<> be; they are just as thoughtful of the interests of America as I 
try to be; they are just as intelligent rs anybody who could address 
In- mind to this thing; and my contest with them is a contest of 
interpretation, not a contest of intention. All I have to urge with 
those men is that they are looking at this thing with too critical an 
eye as to the mere phraseology, without remembering the purpose 
that everybody knows to have been in the minds of those who framed 
it. and that if they go very far in attempting to interpret it by reso- 
lutions of the Senate they may. in appearance at any rate, sufficiently 
alter the meaning of the document to make it necessary to take it back 
to the (•(.until hoard. Taking it back to the council board means. 
among other things, taking it back to Germany; and I frankly tell 
you, my fellow citizens, it would sit very ill upon my stomach to take 
it hack to Germany. Germany, at our request — I may say almost at 
our dictation signed the treaty and has ratified it. It is a contract. 
90 In a- her part in it i> concerned. I can testify that we tried to be 
i'i~i to Germany, and that when we had heard her arguments and 
examined every portion of the counterproposals that she made, we 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 213 

wrote the treaty in its final form and then said, " Sign here." What 
else did our boys die for? Did they die in order that we might ask 
Germany's leave to complete our victory? They died in order that 
we might say to Germany what the terms of victory were in the 
interest of justice and of peace, and we were entitled to take the course 
that we did take. I can only beg these gentlemen in their criticism 
of the treaty and in their action in the Senate not to go so far as to 
make it necessary to ask the consent of the other nations to the 
interpretations which they are putting upon the treaty. I have said 
in all frankness that I do not see a single phrase in the covenant of the 
league of nations which is of doubtful meaning, but if they want to 
say what that undoubted meaning is, in other words that do not 
change the undoubted meaning, I have no objection. If they change 
the meaning of it, then all the other signatories have to consent ; and 
Avhat has been evident in the last week or two is that on the part of 
some men. I believe a very few, the desire is to change the treaty, and 
particularly the covenant, in a way to gh T e America an exceptional 
footing. 

My fellow citizens, the principle that America went into this war 
for was the principle of the equality of sovereign nations. I am just 
as much opposed to class legislation in international matters as in 
domestic matters. I do not, I tell you plainly, believe that any one 
nation should be allowed to dominate, even this beloved Nation of 
our own, and it does not desire to dominate. I said in a speech the 
other night in another connection that so far as my influence and 
power as President of the United States went, I was going to fight 
every attempt to set up a minority government. I was asked after- 
wards whom I was hitting at, what minority I Avas thinking of. T 
said, " Never mind what minority I may have been thinking of at 
the moment; it does not make any difference with me which minor- 
ity it is; whether it is capital or labor. No sort of privilege will 
ever be permitted in this country." It is a partnership or it is a 
mockery. It is a democracy, where the majority are the masters, or 
all the hopes and purposes of the men who founded this Government 
have been defeated and forgotten. And I am of the same principle 
in international affairs. One of the things that gave the world a 
new and bounding hope was that the great United States had said 
that it was fighting for the little nation as well as the great nation : 
that it regarded the rights of the little nation as equal to its own 
rights; that it would make no distinction between free men any- 
where; that it was not fighting for a special advantage for the United 
States but for an equal advantage for all free men everywhere. 
Let gentlemen beware, therefore, how they disappoint the world. 
Let gentlemen beware how they betray the immemorial principles of 
the United States. Let men not make the mistake of claiming a 



214 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

position of privilege for the United States which gives it all the ad- 
vantages of the league of nations and none of the risks and respon- 
sibilities. The principle of equity everywhere is that along with a 
right goes a duty: that if you claim a right for yourself you must 
be ready to support that right for somebody else: that if you claim 
to be a member in a society of any sort you must not claim the right 
to dodge the responsibilities and avoid the burden, but you must 
carry the weight of the enterprise along with the hope of the enter- 
prise. That is the spirit of free men everywhere, and that I know 
to be the spirit of the United States. 

Our decision, therefore, my fellow citizens, rests upon this: If we 
want a league of nations, we must take this league of nations, because 
there is no conceivable way in which any other league of nations is 
obtainable. We must leave it or take it. I should be very sorry to 
have the United States indirectly defeat this great enterprise by ask- 
ing for something, some position of privilege, which other nations in 
their pride can not grant. I would a great deal rather say flatly, 
" She will not go into the enterprise at all.*' And that, my fellow 
citizens, is exactly what Germany is hoping and beginning to dare to 
expect. I am not uttering a conjecture: I am speaking of knowledge, 
knowledge of the things that are said in the German newspapers and 
by German public men. They are taking heart because the United 
States, they hope, is not going to stand with the other free nations of 
the world to guarantee the peace that has been forced upon them. 
They -ee the hope that there will be two nations standing outside the 
league — Germany and the United States. Germany because she 
must : the United States because she will. She knows that that will 
turn the hostility and enmity of all the other nations of the world 
against the United States, as their hostility is already directed 
against her. They do not expect that now the United States will in 
any way align themselves with Germany. They do not expect the 
sympathy of the United States to go out to them now, but they do ex- 
pect the isolation of the United States to bring about an alienation 
between the United States and the other free nations of the world, 
which will make it impossible for the world ever to combine again 
against such enterprises as she was defeated in attempting. All over 
this country pro-German propaganda is beginning to be active again, 
beginning to try to add to the force of the arguments against the 
league in particular and against the treaty and the several items of 
the treaty. And the poison of failure is being injected into the 
whole tine body politic of the united world, a sort of paralysis, a sort 
tear. Germany desires that we should say. " What have we 
created \ A great power which will bring peace, but will that power 
be amiable to us ( Can we control that power ( " We can not control 
it for any but its proper purpose — the purpose of righteousness and 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 215 

peace — but tor that purpose we are invited to control it by the opin- 
ion of mankind, for all over the world peoples are looking to us with 
confidence, our rivals along with the weaker nations. They believe in 
the honesty of purpose and the indomitable rectitude of purpose of 
the United States, and they are willing to have us lead. 

I pray God that the gentlemen who are delaying this thing may 
presently see it in a different light. I fain would appeal to their 
hearts. I wonder if they have forgotten what this war meant. I 
wonder if they have had mothers who lost their sons take them by 
the hand, as they have taken my own, and looked things that their 
hearts were too full to speak, praying me to do all in my power to 
save the sons of other mothers from this terrible thing again. I had 
one fine woman come to me and say as steadily as if she were saying 
a commonplace, " I had the honor to lose a son in the war." How 
fine that is — " I had the honor to sacrifice a son for the redemption 
of mankind ! " And yet there is a sob back of the statement, there 
is a tear brushed hastily away from the cheek. A woman came up to 
the train the other day and seized my hand and was about to say 
something when she turned away in a flood of tears. I asked a 
standerby what was the matter, and he said, " Why, sir, she lost a 
son in France." Mind you, she did not turn away from me. I 
ordered her son overseas. I advised the Congress of the United 
States to sacrifice that son. She came to me as a friend. She had 
nothing in her heart except the hope that I could save other sons, 
though she had given hers gladly, and. God helping me, I will save 
other sons. Through evil report and good report, through resistance 
and misrepresentation and every, other vile thing, I shall fight my 
way to that goal. I call upon the men to whom I have referred — -the 
honest, patriotic, intelligent men, who have been too particularly 
concerned in criticizing the details of that treaty — to forget the 
details, to remember the great enterprise, to stand with me, and fulfill 
the hopes and traditions of the United States. 

My fellow citizens, there is only one conquering force in the world. 
There is only one thing you can not kill, and that is the spirit of free 
men. I was telling some friends to-day of a legendary story of the 
Middle Ages, of a chieftain of one of the half-civilized peoples that 
overran Europe commanding some of his men to do a certain thing 
which they believed to be against the traditions of their tribe. They 
refused, and he blazed out upon them, " Don't you know that I can 
put you to death?" " Yes," they said, " and don't you know that we 
can die cursing you ? " He could not kill their spirits ; and they knew 
perfectly well that if he unjustly slew them the whole spirit of their 
tribe would curse him ; they knew that, if he did an unjust thing, out 
of the blood that they spilt would spring up, as it were, armed men. 
like dragons' teeth, to overwhelm him. The thing that is vindicated 



216 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

in the long run is the right, and the only thing that is unconquerable 
is the truth. America is believed in throughout the world, because 
she has put spirit before material ambition. She has said that she is 
willing to sacrifice everything that she is and everything that she has 
not only that her people may be free but that freedom may reign 
throughout the world. 

I hear men say — how often I heard it said on the other side of the 
water ! — how amazing it was that America went into this war. I 
tell you, my fellow citizens — I tell it with sorrow — it was universally 
believed on the other side of the water that we would not go into the 
war because we were making money out of it, and loved the money 
better than we loved justice. They all believed that. When Ave went 
over there they greeted us with amazement. They said, " These men 
did not have to come. Their territories are not invaded. Their inde- 
pendence is not directly threatened. Their interests were not imme- 
diately attacked, only indirectly. They were getting a great pros- 
perity out of this calamity of ours, and we were told that they wor- 
shipped the almighty dollar; but here come, tramping, tramping, 
tramping, these gallant fellows with something in their faces we 
never saw before — eyes lifted to the horizon, a dash that knows no 
discouragement, a knowledge only of how to go forward, no thought 
of how to go backward — 3,000 miles from home. What are they fight- 
ing for ? Look at their faces and you will see the answer. They see 
a vision. They see a cause. They see mankind redeemed. They see 
a great force which would recall civilization. They love something 
they have never touched. They love the things that emanate from 
the throne of justice, and they have come here to fight with us and 
for us, and they are our comrades." 

We were told by certain people in France that they went to the 
Fourth of July celebration last calendar year in Paris with sinking 
hearts. Our men had just begun to come over in numbers. They did 
not expect they would come soon enough or fast enough to save them. 
They went out of courtesy ; and before the da}^ was over, having been 
in the presence of those boys, they knew that Europe was saved, be- 
cause they had seen what that blind man saw in the song. You have 
heard that spirited song of the blind Frenchman, his boy at the win- 
dow, music in the streets, the marching of troops, and he says to the 
lad, " See what that is. What do you see, lad ? What are the colors ? 
What are the men ? Is there a banner with red and white stripes upon 
it? Is there a bit of heaven in the corner? Are there stars in that 
piece of the firmament? Ah, thank God, the Americans have come ! ?: 
It was the revelation to Europe of the heart of a great Nation, and 
they believe in that heart now. You never hear the old sneers. You 
never hear the old intimation that we will seek our interest and not 
our honor. You never hear the old fear that we shall not stand by 






ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 217 

free men elsewhere who make common cause with us for justice to 
mankind. You hear, on the contrary, confident prediction, confident 
expectation, a confident hope that the whole world will be steadied 
by the magnificent purpose and force of the United States. If I was 
proud as an American before I went over there — and I hope my pride 
had just foundation — I was infinitely more proud when I came back 
to feel that I could bring you this message. 

My fellow citizens, let us — every one of us — bind ourselves in a 
solemn league and covenant of our own that we will redeem this ex- 
pectation of the world, that we will not allow any man to stand in 
the way of it, that the world shall hereafter bless and not curse us, 
that the world hereafter shall follow us and not turn aside from us, 
and that in leading we will not lead along the paths of private ad- 
vantage, we will not lead along the paths of national ambition, but 
we will be proud and happy to lead along the paths of right, so that 
men shall always say that American soldiers saved Europe and 
American citizens saved the world. 



ADDRESS AT LUNCHEON, PALACE HOTEL, SAN FRAN- 
CISCO, CALIF., 

SEPTEMBER 17, 1919. 



Mrs. Mott and my fellow citizens, Mrs. Mott lias very happily 
interpreted the feeling* with which I face this great audience. I have 
come to get a consciousness of your support and of your sentiment, 
at a time in the history of the world, I take leave to say, more critical 
than lias ever been known during the history of the United States. 
I have felt a certain burden of responsibility as I have mixed 
with my fellow countrymen across the continent, because I have 
feared at times that there were those amongst us who did not realize 
just what the heart of this question is. I have been afraid that their 
thoughts were lingering in a past day when the calculation was 
always of national advantage, and that it had not come to see the 
light of the new day in which men are thinking of the common ad- 
vantage and safety of mankind. The issue is nothing else. Either 
we must stand apart, and in the phrase of some gentlemen, " take 
care of ourselves," which means antagonize others, or we must join 
hands with the other great nations of the world and with the weak 
nations of the world, in seeing that justice is everywhere maintained. 

Quite apart from the merits of any particular question that may 
be raised about the treaty itself, I think we are under a certain moral 
compulsion to accept this treaty. In the first place, my fellow citi- 
zens, it was laid down according to American specifications. The 
initial suggestions upon which this treaty is based emanated from 
America. I would not have you understanding me as meaning that 
they were ideas confined to America, because the promptness with 
which they were accepted, the joy with which they were hailed in 
some parts of the world, the readiness of the leaders of nations that 
had been supposed to be seeking chiefly their own interest in adopt- 
ing these principles as the principles of the peace, show that they 
were listening to the counsels of their own people, that they were 
listening to those who knew the critical character of the new age 
and the necessity we were under to take new measures for the peace 
of the world. Because the thing that had happened was intolerable. 
The tiling that Germanv attempted, if it had succeeded, would have 

219 



220 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

set the civilization of the world back a hundred years. We have 
prevented it, but prevention is not enough. We have shown Ger- 
many — and not Germany only, but the world — that upon occasion 
the great peoples of the world will combine to prevent an iniquity, 
but we have not shown how that is going to be done in the future 
with a certainty that will make every other nation know that a simi- 
lar enterprise must not be attempted. 

Again and again, as I have crossed the continent, generous women, 
women I did not know, have taken me by the hand and said, " God 
bless you, Mr. President/' Some of them, like many of you, had 
lost spns and husbands and brothers in the Avar. Why should they 
bless me? I advised Congress to declare war. I advised Congress 
to send their sons to their death. As Commander in Chief of the 
Army, I sent them over the seas, and they were killed. Why should 
they bless me? Because in the generosity of their hearts they want 
the sons of other women saved henceforth, and they believe that 
the methods proposed at any rate create a very hopeful expectation 
that similar wars will be prevented, and that other armies will not 
have to go from the United States to die upon distant fields of bat- 
tle. The moral compulsion upon us, upon us who at the critical 
stage of the world saved the world and who threw in our fortunes 
with all the forward-looking peoples of the world — the moral com- 
pulsion upon us to stand by and see it through is overwhelming. 
We can not now turn back. We made the choice in April, 1917. We 
can not with honor reverse it now. 

Not only is there the compulsion of honor, but there is the com- 
pulsion of interest. I never like to speak of that, because, notwith- 
standing the reputation that we had throughout the world before 
we made the great sacrifice of this war, this Nation does love its 
honor better than it loves its interest. It does yield to moral com- 
pulsion more readily than to material compulsion. That is the glory 
of America. That is the spirit in which she was conceived and born. 
That is the mission that she has in the world. She always has lived 
up to it, and, God helping her, she always will live up to it. But 
if you want, as some of our fellow countrymen insist, to dwell upon 
the material side of it and our interest in the matter, our commercial 
interest, draw the picture for yourselves. The other nations of the 
world are drawing together. We who suggested that they should 
draw together in this new partnership stand aside. We at once 
draw their suspicion upon us. We at once draw their intense hos- 
tility upon us. We at once renew the thing that had begun to be 
done before we went into the war. There was a conference in Paris 
not many months before we went into the war in which the nations 
then engaged against Germany attempted to draw together in an 
exclusive economic combination where thev should serve one an- 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 221 

other's interest and exclude those who had not participated in the 
war from sharing in that interest, and just so certainly as we stay 
out, every market that can possibly be closed against us will be 
closed. If you merely look at it from the point of view of the ma- 
terial prosperity of the United States, we are under compulsion to 
stay in the partnership. I was asking some gentlemen the other 
day who were engaged in commerce of various sorts", " Can you sell 
more easily to a man who trusts you or to a man who distrusts you ? r 
There can be but one answer to that question. Can you sell more 
easily to a man who takes your goods because he can not do without 
them or to a man who wants them and believes them the best? The 
thing demonstrates itself. You make all the lines of trade lines of 
resistance unless you prove true to the things that you have at- 
tempted and undertaken. 

Then, there is a deeper compulsion even than those, the compulsion 
of humanity. If there is one thing that America ought to have 
learned more promptly than any other country it is that, being made 
up out of all the ranks of humanity, in serving itself it must serve 
the human race. I suppose I could not command the words which 
would exaggerate the present expectations of the world with regard 
to the United States. Nothing more thrilling, nothing more touch- 
ing, happened to me on the other side of the water than the daily 
evidences that, not the weak peoples merely, not the peoples of coun- 
tries that had been allowed to shift for themselves and had always 
borne the chief burden of the world's sufferings, but the great peoples 
as well, the people of France as well as the people of Serbia, the peo- 
ple of all the nations that had looked this terror in the face, Avere 
turning to the United States and saying, " We depend upon you to 
take the lead, to direct us how to go out of this wilderness of doubt 
and fear and terror." We can not desert humanity. We are the 
trustees of humanity, and we must see that we redeem the pledges 
which are always implicit in so great a trusteeship. 

So, feeling these compulsions, the compulsion of honor, the com- 
pulsion of interest, and the compulsion of humanity, I wonder what 
it is that is holding some minds back from acquiescence in this great 
enterprise of peace. I must admit to you, my fellow citizens, that I 
have been very much puzzled. I can not conceive a motive adequate 
to hold men off from this thing, and when I examine the objections 
which they make to the treaty I can but wonder if they are really 
thinking, or if, on the other hand, there is some emotion coming 
from fountains that I do not know of which are obliging them to take 
this course. 

Let me take the point in which my initial sympathy is most with 
them, the matter of the cession to Japan of the interests of Germany 
in Shantung, in China. I said to my Japanese colleagues on the 



J 



222 ADDRESSES OF PEESIDENT WILSON. 

other side of the sea, and therefore I am at liberty to say in public, 
I am not satisfied with that settlement, I think it ought to have been 
different, but when gentlemen propose to cure it by striking that 
clause out of the treaty or by ourselves withholding our adherence 
to the treaty, they propose an irrational thing. Let me remind you 
of some of the history of this business. It was in 1898 that China 
ceded these rights and concessions to Germany. The pretext was 
that some German missionaries had been killed. My heart aches, I 
must say, when I think how we have made an excuse of religion 
sometimes to work a deep wrong. The central Government of China 
had done all that they could to protect those German missionaries: 
their death was due to local disturbances, to local passion, to local 
antipathy against the foreigner. There was nothing that the Chi- 
nese Government as a whole could justly be held responsible for; 
but suppose there had been. Two Christian missionaries are killed, 
and therefore one great nation robs another nation and does a thing 
which is fundamentally un-Christian and heathen ! For there was 
no adequate excuse for what Germany exacted of China. I read 
again only the other day the phrases in which poor China was made 
to make the concessions. She was made to make them in words dic- 
tated by Germany, in view of her gratitude to Germany for certain 
services rendered — the deepest hypocrisy conceivable ! She was 
obliged to do so by force. 

Then, what happened, my fellow citizens? Then Russia came in 
and obliged China to cede to her Port Arthur and Talien Wan, not 
for quite so long a period, but upon substantially the same terms. 
Then England must needs have Wei-Hai-Wei as an equivalent con- 
cession to that which had been made to Germany ; and presently cer- 
tain ports, with the territory back of them, were ceded upon similar 
principles to France. Everybody got in, except the United States, 
and said, " If Germany is going to get something, we will get some- 
thing." Why? None of them had any business in there on such 
terms. 

Then when the Japanese-Russian War came, Japan did what she 
has done in this war. She attacked Port Arthur and captured Port 
Arthur, and Port Arthur was ceded to her as a consequence of the 
war. Not one official voice was raised in the United States against 
that cession. No protest was made. No protest was made by the 
Government of the United States against the original cession of this 
Shantung territor}^ to Germany. One of the highest minded men of 
our history was President at that time — I mean Mr. McKinley. One 
of the ablest men that we have had as Secretary of State. Mr. John 
Hay, occupied that great office. In the message of Mr. McKinley 
about this transaction, he says — I am quoting his language — that 
inasmuch as the powers that had taken these territories had agreed 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 223 

to keep the door open there for our commerce, there was no reason 
why we should object. Just so we could trade with these stolen 
territories we were willing to let them be stolen. Which of these 
gentlemen who are now objecting to the cession of the German rights 
in Shantung to Japan were prominent in protesting against the orig- 
inal cession or any one of those original cessions? It makes my 
heart burn when some men are so late in doing justice. 

In the meantime, before we got into this war, but after the war 
had begun, because they deemed the assistance of Japan in the 
Pacific absolutely indispensable, Great Britain and France both 
agreed that if Japan would enter and cooperate in the war she could 
do the same thing with regard to Shantung that she had done with 
regard to Port Arthur ; that is she would take what Germany had in 
China she could keep it. She took it. She has it now. Her troops 
are there. She has it as spoils of war. Observe, my fellow citizens, 
we are not taking this thing away from China ; we are taking it from 
Germany. China had ceded it for 99 years, and there are 78 of those 
99 to run yet. They were Germany's rights in Shantung, not 
China's, that were ceded by the treaty to Japan, but with a differ- 
ence — a difference which never occurred in any of these other cases — 
a difference which was not insisted upon at the cession of Port 
Arthur — upon a condition that no other nation in doing similar 
things in China has ever yielded to. Japan is under solemn promise 
to forego all sovereign rights in the Province of Shantung and to 
retain only what private corporations have elsewhere in China, the 
right of concessionaires with regard to the operation of the railway 
and the exploitation of the mines. Scores of foreign corporations 
have that right in other parts of China. 

But it does not stop there. Coupled with this arrangement is the 
league of nations, under which Japan solemnly undertakes, with the 
rest of us, to protect the territorial integrity of China, along with the 
territorial integrity of other countries, and back of her promise lies 
the similar promise of every other nation, that nowhere will they 
countenance a disregard for the territorial integrity or the political 
independence of that great helpless people, lying there hitherto as an 
object of prey in the great Orient. It is the first time in the history 
of the world that anything has been done for China, and sitting 
around our council board in Paris I put this question : " May I ex- 
pect that this will be the beginning of the retrocession to China of 
the exceptional rights which other Governments have enjoyed there?' 7 
The responsible representatives of the other great Governments said, 
"Yes; you may expect it." Expect it? 

Your attention is constantly drawn to article 10, and that is the 
article — the heart of the covenant — which guarantees the territorial 
integrity and political independence not only of China, but of other 



224 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSOX. 

countries more helpless even than China; but besides article 10, there 
is article 11, which makes it the right of every member of the league, 
big or little, influential or not influential, to draw attention to any- 
thing, anywhere, that is likely to disturb the peace of the world or 
the good understanding between nations upon which the peace of the 
world depends. Whenever formerly anything was done in detriment 
of the interests of China, we had to approach the Government that 
did it with apologies. We had, as it were, to say. "This is none of 
our business, but Ave would like to suggest that this is not in the in- 
terest of China." I am repeating, not the words but the purport of 
notes that I have signed myself to Japan, in which I was obliged to 
use all the genuflections of apology and say, ,k The United States be- 
lieves that this is wrong in principle and suggests to the Japanese 
Government that the matter be reconsidered.'' Now, when you have 
the league of nations the representative of the United States has the 
right to stand up and say, " This is against the covenants of peace : 
it can not be done." and if occasion arises we can add, " It shall not 
be done." The weak and oppressed and wronged peoples of the 
world have never before had a forum made for them in which they 
can summon their enemies into the presence of the judgment of man- 
kind, and if there is one tribunal that the wrongdoer ought to dread 
more than another it is that tribunal of the opinion of mankind. 
Some nations keep their international promises only because they 
wish to obtain the respect of mankind. You remember those immor- 
tal words in the opening part of the Declaration of Independence. 
I wish I could quote them literally, but they run this way, that out of 
respect for the opinion of mankind the leaders of the American Revo- 
lution now state the causes which have led them to separate them- 
selves from Great Britain. America was the first to set that example, 
the first to admit that right and justice and even the basis of revolu- 
tion was a matter upon which mankind was entitled to form a judg- 
ment. 

If we do not take part in this thing, what happens I France and 
England are absolutely bound to this thing without any qualifica- 
tions. The alternative is to defend China in the future with im- 
portant concessions to begin with, or else let the world go back to its 
old methods of rapacity: or else take up arms against France and 
England and Japan, and begin the shedding of blood over again, 
almost fratricidal blood. Does that sound like a practical program^ 
Does that sound like doing China a service I Does that sound like 
anything that is rational i 

Go to other matters with which I have less patience, other objec- 
tions to the league. I have spoken of article 10. Those who object 
to article 10 object to entering the league with any responsibilities 
whatever. They want to make it a matter of opinion merely and not 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 225 

a matter of action. They know just as well as I know that there is 
nothing in article 10 that can oblige the Congress of the United 
States to declare war if it does not deem it wise to declare war. We 
engage with the other nations of the world to preserve as against 
external aggression — not as against internal revolution — the terri- 
torial integrity and existing political independence of the other mem- 
bers of the league ; and then, in the next sentence, it is said that the 
council of the league of nations shall advise with regard to the meas- 
ures which may be necessary to carry out this promise on the part 
of the members. As I have said several times in my speeches, I have 
in vain searched the dictionary to find any other meaning for the 
word " advise " than u advise." These gentlemen would have you be- 
lieve that our armies can be ordered abroad by some other power or 
by a combination of powers. They are thinking in an air-tight com- 
partment. America is not the only proud nation in the world. I 
can testify from my share in the counsels on the other side of the 
sea that the other nations are just as jealous of their sovereignty as 
we are of ours. They would no more have dreamed of giving us 
the right of ordering out their armies than we would have dreamed 
of giving them the right to order out our armies. The advice can 
come from the United States only after the United States representa- 
tive votes in the affirmative. 

We have got an absolute veto on the thing, unless we are parties to 
the dispute, and I want again to call attention to what that means. 
That means unless we want to seize somebody's territory or invade 
somebody's political independence, or unless somebody else wants 
to seize our territory and invade our political independence. I re- 
gard either of those contingencies as so remote that they are not 
troubling me in the least. I know the people of this country well 
enough to know that we will not be the aggressors in trying to execute 
a wrong, and in looking about me I do not see anybody else that 
would think it wise to try it on us. But suppose we are parties. 
Then is it the council of the league that is forcing war upon us? 
The war is ours anyhow. We are in circumstances where it is neces- 
sary for Congress, if it wants to steal somebody's territory or pre- 
vent somebody from stealing our territory, to go to war. It is not 
the council of the league that brings us into war at that time, in such 
circumstances ; it is the unfortunate circumstances which have arisen 
in some matter of aggression. I want to say again that article 10 
is the very heart of the covenant of the league, because all the great 
wrongs of the world have had their root in the seizure of territory or 
the control of the political independence of other peoples. I believe 
that I speak the feeling of the people of the United States when I 

141677— S. Doc. 120, 66-1 15 



51 



226 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

say that, having seen one great wrong like that attempted and hav- 
ing prevented it, we are ready to prevent it again. 

Those are the two principal criticisms, that we did not do the 
impossible with regard to Shantung and that we may be advised to 
go to war. That is all there is in either of those. But they say, 
" We want the Monroe doctrine more distinctly acknowledged. 
Well, if I could have found language that was more distinct than 
that used, I should have been very happy to suggest it, but it says in 
so many words that nothing in that document shall be construed as 
affecting the validity of the Monroe doctrine. I do not see what 
more it could say, but, as I say, if the clear can be clarified, I have 
no objection to its being clarified. The meaning is too obvious to 
admit of discussion, and I want you to realize how extraordinary 
that provision is. Every nation in the world had been jealous of 
the Monroe doctrine, had studiously avoided doing or saying any- 
thing that would admit its validity, and here all the great nations of 
the world sign a document which admits its validity. That consti- 
tutes nothing less than a moral revolution in the attitude of the rest 
of the world toward America. 

What does the Monroe doctrine mean in that covenant? It means 
that with regard to aggressions upon the Western Hemisphere we 
are at liberty to act without waiting for other nations to act. That 
is the Monroe doctrine. The Monroe doctrine says that if anybody 
tries to interfere with affairs in the Western Hemisphere it will be 
regarded as an unfriendly act to the United States — not to the rest of 
the world — and that means that the United States will look after it, 
and will not ask anj^body's permission to look after it. The document 
says that nothing in this document must be construed as interfering 
with that. I dismiss the objections to the Monroe doctrine all the 
more because this is what happened : I brought the first draft of the 
covenant to this country in March last. I then invited the Foreign 
Affairs Committee of the House and the Foreign Relations Commit 
tee of the Senate to the White House to dinner, and after dinner we 
had the frankest possible conference with regard to this draft. When 
I went back to Paris I carried every suggestion that was made in that 
conference to the commission on the league of nations, which con- 
sisted of representatives of 14 nations, and every one of the sug- 
gestions of those committees was embodied in the document. I sup- 
pose it is a pride of style. I suppose that, although the substance 
was embodied, they would rather write it differently, but, after all, 
that is a literary matter. After all, that is a question of pride in the 
command of the English language, and I must say that there were a 
great many men on that commission on the league of nations who 
seemed perfectly to understand the English language and who wished 



ADDEESSES OF PEESIDENT WILSON. 227 

to express, not only in the English text but in its French equivalent, 
exactly what we wanted to say. 

One of the suggestions I carried over was that we should have the 
right to withdraw. I must say that I did not want to say, " We are 
going into this if you promise we can scuttle whenever we want to." 
That did not seem to me a very handsome thing to propose, and I 
told the men in the conference at the White House, when they raised 
the question, that it had been raised in the commission on the league 
of nations and that it was the unanimous opinion of the international 
lawyers of that body that, inasmuch as this was an association of 
sovereigns, they had the right to withdraw. But I conceded that if 
that right was admitted there could be no harm in stating it, and so 
in the present draft of the covenant it is stated that any member may 
withdraw upon two years' notice, which, I think, is not an unreason- 
able length of time, provided that at the end of the two years all the 
international obligations of that power under the covenant shall have 
been fulfilled. Would you wish any other condition? Would you 
wish the United States allowed to withdraw without fulfilling its 
obligations ? Is that the kind of people we are ? Moreover, have we 
ever failed to fulfill our international obligations? It is a point of 
pride with me, my fellow citizens, not to debate this question. I will 
not debate with anybody whether the United States is likely to with- 
draw without fulfilling its obligations or not, and if other gentlemen 
entertain that possibility and expectation, I separate myself from 
them. 

But there is another matter. They say that the British Empire has 
six votes and we have only one. It happens that our one is as big as 
the six, and that satisfies me entirely. Let me explain what I mean. 
It is only in the assembly that the British Empire has six votes — not 
in the council — and there is only one thing that the assembly votes 
on in which it can decide a matter without the concurrence of all the 
States represented on the council, and that is the admission of new 
members to the league of nations. With regard to every other mat- 
ter, for example, amendments to the covenant, with regard to cases 
referred out of the council to the assembly, it is provided that if a 
majority of the assembly and the representatives of all the States 
represented on the council concur, the vote shall be valid and con- 
clusive, which means that the affirmative vote of the United States 
is in every instance just as powerful as the six votes of the British 
Empire. I took the pains yesterday, I believe it was, on the train, to 
go through the covenant almost sentence by sentence again, to find if 
there was any case other than the one I have mentioned in which that 
was not true, and there is no other case in which that is not true. Of 
course, you will understand that wherever the United States is a 
party to a quarrel and that quarrel is carried to the assembly, we 



228 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

can not vote ; but, similarly, if the British Empire is a party her six 
representatives can not vote. It is an even break any way you take 
it, and I would rather count six as one person than six as six persons. 
So far as I can see, it makes me a bigger man. The point to remem- 
ber is that the energy of the league of nations resides in the council, 
not in the assembly, and that in the council there is a perfect equality 
of votes. That settles that matter, and even some of my fellow 
countrymen who insist upon keeping a hyphen in the middle of 
their names ought to be satisfied with that. Though I must admit 
that I do not care to argue anything with a hyphen. A man that puts 
anything else before the word "American " is no comrade of mine, 
and yet I am willing even to discomfit him with a statement of fact. 

Those are the objections to yielding to these compulsions of honor, 
interest, and humanity, and it is because of the nature of these objec- 
tions, their flimsiness, the impossibility of supporting them with con- 
clusiA^e argument that I am profoundly puzzled to know what is back 
of the opposition to the league of nations. I know one of the results, 
and that is to raise the hope in the minds of the German people that, 
after all, they can separate us from those who were our associates in 
the war. I know that the pro-German propaganda which had there- 
tofore not dared to raise its head again has now boldly raised its head 
and is active all over the United States. These are disturbing and 
illuminating circumstances. Pray understand me ; I am not accusing 
some of the honorable men whose objections I am trying to answer 
with trying to draw near to Germany. That is not my point ; but I 
am saying that Avhat they are attempting to do is exactly what 
Germany desires, and that it would touch the honor of the United 
States very near if at the end of this great struggle we should seek 
to take the position which our enemies desire and our friends deplore. 

I am arguing the matter only because I am a very patient man. I 
have not the slightest doubt as to what the result is going to be. I have 
felt the temper and high purpose of this great people as I have crossed 
this wonderful land of ours, and one of the things that make it most 
delightful to stand here is to remember that the people of the Pacific 
coast were the first to see the new duty in its entirety. It is a remark- 
able circumstance that you people, who were farthest from the field 
of conflict, most remote from that contact of interests which stirred 
so many peoples, yet outdid the rest of the country in volunteering for 
service and volunteering your money. As I came through that won- 
derful country to the north of us it occurred to me one day that the 
aspiring lines of those wonderful mountains must lead people's eyes 
to be drawn upward and to look into the blue serene and see things 
apart from the confusions of affairs, to see the real, pure vision of 
the interests of humanity ; and that, after all, the spirit of America 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON". 229 

was best expressed where people withdrew their thoughts from the 
entangling interests of everyday life, purified their motives from all 
that was selfish and groveling and based upon the desire to seize and 
get and turned their thoughts to those things that are worth living for. 
The only thing that makes the world inhabitable is that it is 
sometimes ruled by its purest spirits. I want to leave this illustration, 
which I have often used, in your minds of what I mean. Some years 
ago some one said to me that the modern world was a world in which 
the mind was monarch, and my reply was that if that was true it must 
be one of those modern monarchs that reigned and did not govern ; 
that, as a matter of fact, the world was governed by a great popular 
assembly made up of the passions and that the constant struggle of 
civilization was to see that the handsome passions had a working 
majority. That is the problem of civilization, that the things that 
engage the best impulses of the human spirit should be the prevailing 
things, the conquering things, the things that one can die comfortably 
after achieving. How do men ever go to sleep that have conceived 
wrong? How do men ever get their own consent to laugh who have 
not looked the right in the face and extended their hand to it? If 
America can in the future look the rest of the world in the face, it 
will be because she has been the champion of justice and of right. 



ADDRESS AT AUDITORIUM, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF. 

SEPTEMBER 17, 1919. 



Mr. Chairman, Mr. Rolph, my fellow countrymen, you have 
given me a very royal welcome, and I am profoundly appreciative 
of the greeting that you have extended me. It is a matter of grati- 
fication to me to be permitted to speak to this great audience repre- 
senting as it does one of the most forward-looking States of the 
Union, representing as it does a great body of people who are accus- 
tomed to look and plan to the future. As I picture to myself the 
history of this great country which we love, I remember the surging 
tides of humanity moving always westward, over the eastern moun- 
tains and the plains, deploying upon the great further slopes of the 
Rockies, then overflowing into these fertile and beautiful valleys by 
the Pacific ; and that is a picture to me of the constant forward, con- 
fident, hopeful movement of the American people. I feel that it is 
not without significance that this was the portion of the country 
which responded with the most extraordinary spirit to the call to 
arms, responded with the utmost spontaneity and generosity to the 
call for the mone}^ of the people to be loaned to the Government for 
the conduct of the Great War, responded to all those impulses of 
purpose and of freedom which underlay the great struggle we have 
just passed through. 

As I have passed through your streets to-day, and through others 
in the many generous communities north of you and east of you, you 
have made me feel how the spirit of the American people is coming 
to a single vision, how the thought of the American people is back 
of a single purpose. I have come before you, my fellow citizens, to 
discuss a very serious theme. I want to analyze for you the very 
important issue with which this Nation is now face to face. It is 
by far the most important question that has ever come before this 
people for decision, and the reason I have come out upon this long 
journey is that I am conscious that it is the people, their purpose, 
their wish, that is to decide this thing, and not the thought of those 
who are planning any private purpose of their own. 

What I first want to call your attention to, my fellow citizens, is 
this: You know that the debate in which we are engaged centers 
first of all upon the league of nations, and there seems to have arisen 
an idea in some quarters that the league of nations is an idea recently 
conceived, conceived by a small number of persons, somehow origi- 
nal 



232 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

nated by the American representatives at the council table in Paris. 
Nothing could be further from the truth than that. I would not feel 
the confidence that I feel in the league of nations if I felt that it was 
so recent and novel a growth and birth as that. On the contrary, 
it is the fruit of many generations of thoughtful, forward-looking 
men, not only in this country but in the other countries of the world, 
who have been able to look forward to the combined fortunes of man- 
kind. The men who have conceived this great purpose are not men 
who through these generations, when they were concerting counsel in 
this great matter, thought of the fortunes of parties, thought of the 
fortunes of individuals. I would be ashamed of myself, as I am 
frankly ashamed of any fellow countryman of mine who does it, if 
I discussed this great question with any portion of my thought de- 
voted to the contest of parties and the elections of next year. 

Some of the greatest spirits, some of the most instructed minds of 
both parties have been devoted to this great idea for more than a gen- 
eration. It has some before the Paris conference out of the stage of 
ideal conception. It had long before that begun to assume the shape 
of a definite program and plan for the concert and cooperation of the 
nations in the interest of the peace of the world, and when I went to 
Paris I was conscious that I was carrying there no plan which was 
novel either to America or to Europe, but a plan which all statesmen 
who realized the real interests of their people had long ago hoped 
might be carried out in some day when the world would realize what 
the peace of the world meant and what were its necessary founda- 
tions. When I got to Paris I was not conscious of presenting anything 
that they had not long considered, and I felt that I was merely the 
spokesman of thoughtful minds and hopeful spirits in America. I 
was not putting forward any purpose of my own. So that I beg you 
will dismiss any personal appearance or personal relationship which 
this great plan may bear. I would indeed be a very proud man if I 
had personally conceived this great idea, but I can claim no such 
honor. I can only claim the privilege of having been the obedient 
servant of the great ideals and purposes of beloved America. 

I want you to realize, my fellow countrymen, that those Ameri- 
cans who are opposing this plan of the league of nations offer no 
substitute. They offer nothing that they pretend will accomplish 
the same object. On the contrary, they are apparently willing to 
go back to that old and evil order which prevailed before this war 
began and which furnished a ready and fertile soil for those seeds 
of envy which sprung up like dragon's teeth out of the bloody soil 
of Europe. They are ready to go back to that old and ugly plan of 
armed nations, of alliances, of watchful jealousies, of rabid antago- 
nisms, of purposes concealed, running by the subtle channels of in- 
trigue through the veins of people who do not dream what poison is 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 233 

being injected into their systems. They are willing to have the 
United States stand alone, withdraw from the concert of nations; 
and what does that mean, my fellow citizens? It means that we 
shall arm as Germany was armed, that we shall submit our young 
men to the kind of constant military service that the young men of 
Germany were subjected to. It means that we shall pay not 
lighter but heavier taxes. It means that we shall trade in a world 
in ^which we are suspected and watched and disliked, instead of in a 
world which is now ready to trust us, ready to follow our leadership, 
ready to receive our traders, along with our political representatives 
as friends, as men who are welcome, as men who bring goods and 
ideas for which the world is ready and for which the world has been 
waiting. That is the alternative which they offer. 

It is my purpose, fellow citizens, to analyze the objections which 
are made to this great league, and I shall be very brief. In the first 
place, you know that one of the difficulties which have been ex- 
perienced by those who are objecting to this league is that they do 
not think that there is a wide enough door open for us to get out. 
For my own part, I am not one of those who, when they go into 
a generous enterprise, think first of all how they are going to turn 
away from those with whom they are associated. I am not one of 
those who, when they go into a concert for the peace of the world, 
want to sit close to the door with their hand on the knob and con- 
stantly trying the door to be sure that it is not locked. If we want 
to go into this thing — and we do want to go into it — we will go in 
it with our whole hearts and settled purpose to stand by the great 
enterprise to the end. Nevertheless, you will remember — some of 
you, I dare say — that when I came home in March for an all too 
brief visit to this country, which seems to me the fairest and dearest 
in the world, I brought back with me the first draft of the covenant 
of the league of nations. I called into consultation the Committees 
on Foreign Affairs and on Foreign Relations of the House and 
Senate of the United States, and I laid the draft of the covenant 
before them. One of the things that they proposed was that it 
should be explicitly stated that any member of the league should 
have the right to withdraw. I carried that suggestion back to Paris, 
and without the slightest hesitation it was accepted and acted upon ; 
and every suggestion which was made in that conference at the 
White House was accepted by the conference of peace in Paris. 
There is not a feature of the covenant, except one, now under debate 
upon which suggestions were not made at that time, and there is not 
one of those suggestions that was not adopted by the conference of 
peace. 

The gentlemen say, " You have laid a limitation upon the right to 
withdraw. You have said that we can withdraw upon two years' 



234 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

notice, if at that time we shall have fulfilled all our international 
obligations and all our obligations under the covenant." " Yes," I 
reply ; " is it characteristic of the United States not to fulfill her 
international obligations? Is there any fear that we shall wish to 
withdraw dishonorably? Are gentlemen willing to stand up and 
say that they want to get out whether they have the moral right to 
get out or not?" I for one am too proud as an American to debate 
that subject on that basis. The United States has always fulfilled 
its international obligations, and, God helping her, she always will. 
There is nothing in the covenant to prevent her acting upon her own 
judgment with regard to that matter. The only thing she has to 
fear, the only thing she has to regard, is the public opinion of man- 
kind, and inasmuch as we have always scrupulously satisfied the 
public opinion of mankind with regard to justice and right, I for 
my part am not afraid at any time to go before that jury. It is a 
jury that might condemn us if we did wrong, but it is not a jury 
that could oblige us to stay in the league, so that there is absolutely 
no limitation upon our right to withdraw. 

One of the other suggestions I carried to Paris was that the com- 
mittees of the two Houses did not find the Monroe doctrine safe- 
guarded in the covenant of the league of nations. I suggested that 
to the conference in Paris, and they at once inserted the provision 
which is now there that nothing in that covenant shall be construed 
as affecting the validity of the Monroe doctrine. What is the 
validity of the Monroe doctrine? The Monroe doctrine means that 
if any outside power, any power outside this hemisphere, tries to 
impose its will upon any portion of the Western Hemisphere the 
United States is at liberty to act independently and alone in repel- 
ling the aggression; that it does not have to wait for the action of 
the league of nations; that it does not have to wait for anything but 
the action of its own administration and its own Congress. This is 
the first time in the history of international diplomacy that any 
great government has acknowledged the validity of the Monroe 
doctrine. Now for the first time all the great fighting powers of 
the world except Germany, which for the time being has ceased to be 
a great fighting power, acknowledge the validity of the Monroe doc- 
trine and acknowledge it as part of the international practice of the 
world. 

They are nervous about domestic questions. They say, "It is 
intolerable to think that the league of nations should interfere with 
domestic questions," and whenever they begin to specify they speak 
of the question of immigration, of the question of naturalization, of 
the question of the tariff. My fellow citizens, no competent or 
authoritative student of international law would dream of main- 
taining that these were anything but exclusively domestic questions, 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 235 

and the covenant of the league expressly provides that the league 
can take no action whatever about matters which are in the practice 
of international law regarded as domestic questions. We did not 
undertake to enumerate samples of domestic questions for the very 
good reason, which will occur to any lawyer, that if you made a list 
it would be inferred that what you left out was not included. No- 
body with a thoughtful knowledge of international practice has the 
least doubt as to what are domestic questions, and there is no ob- 
scurity whatever in this covenant with regard to the safeguarding 
of the United States, along with other sovereign countries, in the 
control of domestic questions. I beg that you will not fancy, my fel- 
low citizens, that the United States is the only country that is jealous 
of its sovereignty. Throughout these conferences it was necessary at 
every turn to safeguard the sovereign independence of the several 
governments who were taking part in the conference, and they were 
just as keen to protect themseh T es against outside intervention in 
domestic matters as we were. Therefore the whole heartiness of 
their concurrent opinion runs with this safeguarding of domestic 
questions. 

It is objected that the British Empire has six votes and we have 
one. The answer to that is that it is most carefully arranged that 
our one vote equals the six votes of the British Empire. Anybody 
who will take the pains to read the covenant of the league of nations 
will find out that the assembly — and it is only in the assembly that 
the British Empire has six votes — is not a voting body. ' There is a 
very limited number of subjects upon which it can act at all, and I 
have taken the pains to write them down here, after again and again 
going through the covenant for the purpose of making sure that 
I had not omitted anything, in order that I might give you an ex- 
plicit account of the thing. There are two things which a majority 
of the assembly may do without the concurrent vote of the United 
States. A majority of the assembly can admit a new member to the 
league of nations. A majority of the assembly can recommend to any 
nation a member of the league a reconsideration of such treaties as 
are apparently in conflict wth the provisions of the covenant itself; it 
can advise any member of the league to seek a reconsideration of any 
international obligation which seems to conflict with the covenant 
itself, but it has no means whatever of obliging it to reconsider even 
so important a matter as that, which is obviously a moral duty on 
the Dart of anv member of the league. All the action, all the energy, 
all the initiative, of the league of nations is resident in the council, 
and in the council a unanimous vote is necessary for action, and no 
action is possible without the concurrent vote of the United States. 
I would rather, personally, as one man count for six than be six men 
and count only six. The United States can offset six votes. Here are 



236 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

the cases : When a matter in dispute is referred by the council to the 
assembly its action must be taken by a majority vote of the assembly, 
concurred in by the representatives of all the governments repre- 
sented in the council, so that the concurrence of the vote of the United 
States is absolutely necessary to an affirmative vote of the assembly 
itself. In the case of an amendment to the covenant it is necessary 
that there should be a unanimous vote of the representatives of the 
nations which are represented in the council in addition to a majority 
vote of the assembly itself. And there is all the voting that the 
assembly does 

Not a single affirmative act or negative decision upon a matter of 
action taken by the league of nations can be validated without the 
vote of the United States of America. We can dismiss from our 
dreams the six votes of the British Empire, for the real underlying 
conception of the assembly of the league of nations is that it is the 
forum of opinion, not of action. It is the debating body ; it is the 
body where the thought of the little nation along with the thought 
of the big nation is brought to bear upon those matters which affect 
the peace of the world, is brought to bear upon those matters which 
affect the good understanding between nations upon which the peace 
of the world depends ; where this stifled voice of humanity is at last 
to be heard, where nations that have borne the unspeakable sufferings 
of the ages that must have seemed to them like seons will find voice 
and expression, where the moral judgment of mankind can sway the 
opinion of the world. That is the function of the assembly. The 
assembly is the voice of mankind. The council, where unanimous 
action is necessary, is the only means through which that voice can 
accomplish action. 

You say, " We have heard a great deal about article 10." I just 
now said that the only substitute for the league of nations which is 
offered by the opponents is a return to the old system. What was 
the old system? That the strong had all the rights and need pay 
no attention to the rights of the weak; that if a great powerful 
nation saw what it wanted, it had the right to go and take it; 
that the weak nations could cry out and cry out as they pleased and 
there would be no hearkening ear anywhere to their rights. I want 
to bring in another subject connected with this treaty, but not with 
the league of nations, to illustrate what I am talking about. You 
have heard a great deal about the cession to Japan of the rights 
which Germany had acquired in Shantung Province in China. 
What happened under the old order of things, my fellow citizens? 
The story begins in 1898. Two German missionaries were killed 
in China by parties over whom the Central Government of China 
was unable to exercise control. It was one of those outbreaks, like 
the pitiful Boxer rebellion, where a sudden hatred of foreigners 
/ 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 237 

wells up in the heart of a nation uninformed, aware of danger, 
aware of wrong, but not knowing just how to remedy it, not know- 
ing just what was the instrumentality of right. And, my fellow 
citizens, why should not the Chinaman hate the foreigner? The 
foreigner has always taken from him everything that he could get. 
When by irresponsible persons these German missionaries were 
murdered, the German Government insisted that a great part of 
the fair Province of Shantung should be turned over to them for 
exploitation. They insisted that the accessible part of Kaiochow 
Bay, the part where trade entered and left, should be delivered over 
to them for sovereign control for 99 years, and that they should be 
given a concession for a railway into the interior and for the right 
to exploit mines in that rich mineral country for 30 miles on either 
side of the railway. 

This was not unprecedented, my fellow countrymen. Other civi- 
lized nations had done the same thing to China, and at that time what 
did the Government of the United States do ? I want to speak with 
the utmost respect for the administration of that time, and the respect 
is unaffected. That very lovable and honest gentleman, William 
McKinley, was President of the United States. His Secretary of 
State was one of the most honorable and able of the long series of 
our Secretaries of State, the Hon. John Hay. I believe Mr. Hay, if 
he had seen any way to accomplish more than he did accomplish, 
would have attempted to accomplish it, but this is all that the admin- 
istration of Mr. McKinley attempted: They did not even protest 
against this compulsory granting to Germany of the best part of a 
rich Province of a helpless country, but only stipulated that the Ger- 
mans should keep it open to the trade of the United States. They 
did not make the least effort to save the rights of China; they only 
tried to save the commercial advantages of the United States. There 
immediately followed upon that cession to Germany a cession to Rus- 
sia of Port Arthur and the region called Talien-Wan for 25 years, 
with the privilege of renewing it for a similar period. When, soon 
afterwards, Japan and Russia came to blows, you remember what 
happened. Russia was obliged to turn over to Japan Port Arthur 
and Talien-Wan, just exactly as Japan is now allowed to take over 
the German rights in Shantung. This Government, though the con- 
ference which determined these things was held on our own soil, did 
not, so far as I have been able to learn, make the slightest intimation 
of objecting. At the time Germany got Kiaochow Bay, England 
came in and said that since Germany was getting a piece of Shantung 
and Russia was getting Port Arthur and Talien-Wan, she would insist 
upon having her slice of China, too, and the region of Wei-Hai-Wai 
was ceded to her. Immediately upon that France got into the un- 
handsome game, and there was ceded to France for 99 years one of the 



238 ADDKESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

ports of China with the region lying behind it. In all of those 
transactions there was not a single attempt made by the Government 
of the United States to do anything except to keep those regions open 
to our traders. 

You now have the historic setting of the settlement about Shan- 
tung. What I want to call your attention to is that the treaty of 
peace does not take Shantung from China ; it takes it from Germany. 
There are 78 years of the 99 of that lease still to run, and not only do 
we not take it from China, but Japan promises in an agreement 
which is formally recorded, which is acknowledged by the Japanese 
Government, to return all the sovereign rights which Germany en- 
joyed in Shantung without qualification to China, and to retain 
nothing except what foreign corporations have throughout Chinas 
the right to run that railroad and exploit those mines. There is not 
a great commercial and industrial nation in Europe that does not 
enjoy privileges of that sort in China, and some of them enjoy 
them at the expense of the sovereignty of China. Japan has promised 
to release everything that savors of sovereignty and return it to 
China itself. She will have no right to put armed men anywhere 
into that portion of China. She will have no light to interfere with 
the civil administration of that portion of China. She will have no 
rights but economic and commercial rights. Now, if we choose to 
say that we will not assent to the Shantung provision, what do we do 
for China? Absolutely nothing. Japan has what Germany had in 
China in her military possession now. She has the promise of Great 
Britain and France that so far a they are concerned she can have it 
without qualification, and the only way we can take it away from 
Japan is by going to war with Japan and Great Britain and France. 

The league of nations for the first time provides a tribunal in which 
not only the sovereign rights of Germany and of Japan in China, 
but the sovereign rights of other nations can be curtailed, because 
every member of the league solemnly covenants to respect and pre- 
serve the territorial integrity and existing political independence of 
the other members, and China is to be a member. Never before, my 
fellow citizens, has there been a tribunal to which people like China 
could carry the intolerable grievances to which they have been sub- 
jected. Now a great tribunal has been set up in which the pressure 
of the whole judgment of the world will be exercised in her behalf. 

That is the significance of article 10. Article 10 is the heart of 
the whole promise of peace, because it cuts out of the transactions 
of nations all attempts to impair the territorial integrity or invade 
the political independence of the weak as well as of the strong. Why 
did not Mr. Hay protest the acquisition of those rights in Shantung 
by Germany? Why did he not protest what England got, and what 
France got, and what Russia got I Because under international law. 



ADDKESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 239 

as it then stood, that would have been a hostile act toward those 
governments. The law of the world was actually such that if vou 
mentioned anybody else's wrong but your own, you spoke as an 
enemy. After you have read article 10, read article 11. Article 11 
says that it shall be the friendly right of any member of the league, 
strong or weak, to call the attention of the league to any matter, 
anywhere, that affects the peace of the world or the good under- 
standing between nations upon which the peace of the world de- 
pends; so that for the first time it affords fine spirits like Mr. Mc- 
Kinley and Mr. John Hay the right to stand up before mankind 
and protest, and to say, " The rights of China shall be as sacred as 
the rights of those nations that are able to take care of themselves 
by arms.'' It is the most hopeful change in the law of the world 
that has ever been suggested or adopted. 

But there is another subject upon which some of our fellow citizens 
are particularly sensitive. They say, " What does the league of na- 
tions do for the right of self-determination?'' I think I can answer 
that question; if not satisfactorily, at any rate very specifically. It 
was not within the privilege of the conference of peace to act upon 
the right of self-determination of any peoples except those which 
had been included in the territories of the defeated empires — that is 
to say, it was not then within their power — but the moment the 
covenant of the league of nations is adopted it becomes their right. 
If the desire for self-determination of any people in the world is 
likely to affect the peace of the world or the good understanding be- 
tween nations, it becomes the business of the league; it becomes the 
right of any member of the league to call attention to it ; it becomes 
the function of the league to bring the whole process of the opinion 
of the world to bear upon that very matter. Where before, and 
when before, may I ask some of my fellow countrymen who want a 
forum upon which to conduct a hopeful agitation, were they ever 
offered the opportunity to bring their case to the judgment of man- 
kind? If they are not satisfied with that, their case is not good. 
The only case that you ought to bring with diffidence before the 
great jury of men throughout the world is the case that you can 
not establish. The only thing I shall ever be afraid to see the league 
of nations discuss,, if the United States is concerned, is a case which 
I can hardly imagine, where the United States is wrong, because I 
have the hopeful and confident expectation that whenever a case in 
which the United States is affected is brought to the consideration 
of that great body we need have no nervousness as to the elements 
of the argument so far as we are concerned. The glory of the 
United States is that it never claimed anything to which it was not 
justly entitled. 



240 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON". 

I look forward with a quickened pulse to the days that lie ahead 
of us as a member of the league of nations, for we shall be a member 
of the league of nations — I look forward with confidence and with 
exalted hope to the time when we can indeed legitimately and con- 
stantly be the champions and friends of those who are struggling for 
right anywhere in the world, and no nation is likely to forget, my 
fellow citizens, that behind the moral judgment of the United States 
resides the overwhelming force of the United States. We were re- 
spected in those old Revolutionary days when there were three mil- 
lions of us. We are, it happens, very much more respected, now that 
there are more than a hundred millions of us. Now that we command 
some of the most important resources of the world, back of the 
majesty of the United States lies the strength of the United States. 
If Germany had ever dreamed, when she conceived her ungodly en- 
terprise, that the United States would have come into the war, she 
never would have dared to attempt it. 

But now, my fellow citizens, the hope of Germany has revived. 
The hope of Germany has revived, because in the debates now taking 
place in the United States she sees a hope of at last doing what her 
arms could not do — dividing the United States from the great na- 
tions with which it was associated in the war. Here is a quotation 
from a recent utterance of one of her counsellors of state : 

"All humanity, Germany particularly, is tensely awaiting the de-. 
cision of the American Senate on the peace treaty," ex-Minister of 
State von Scheller-Steinwartz said to-day. "Apparently" — out of 
respect for him I will not mention the name that that ex-Minister 
Steinwartz mentions — " apparently Senator Blank is the soul of the 
opposition. The Senator is no German hater. He hates all non- 
Americans equally, and he is absolutely a just man of almost Quaker- 
like moral strength." How delightful to receive such praise from 
such a source ! " When he and other important Senators fight the 
peace treaty, their course means that the treaty displeases them be- 
cause in the excessive enslavement of Germany, for which America 
would be forever responsible, they see grave danger of future com- 
plications. That course is thus to be hailed like the morning red of 
a new dawn." A new dawn for the world ? Oh, no ; a new dawn for 
Germany. "There is promise of a still better realization of conditions 
in the prospect that America, in all seriousness, may express the 
wish for a separate peace with the Central Powers." 

A separate peace with the Central Empires could accomplish noth- 
ing but our eternal disgrace, and I would like, if my voice could 
reach him, to let this German counsellor know that the red he sees 
upon the horizon is not the red of a new dawn, but the red of a 
consuming fire which will consume everything like the recent pur- 
poses of the Central Empires. It is not without significance, my 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 241 

fellow citizens, that coincidentally with this debate with regard 
to the ratification of this treaty the whole pro-German propaganda 
has shown its head all over the United States. I would not have you 
understand me to mean that the men who are opposing the ratifica- 
tion of the treaty are consciously encouraging the pro-German 
propaganda. I have no right to say that or to think it, but I do say 
that what they are doing is encouraging the pro-German propa- 
ganda, and that it is bringing about a hope in the minds of those 
whom we have just spent our precious blood to defeat that they may 
separate us from the rest of the world and produce this interesting 
spectacle, only two nations standing aside from the great concert 
and guaranty of peace — beaten Germany and triumphant America. 

See what can be accomplished by that. By that the attitude of the 
rest of the world toward America will be exactly what its recent 
attitude was toward Germany, and we will be in the position abso- 
lutely alien to every American conception of playing a lone hand in 
the world for our selfish advantage and aggrandizement. The thing 
is inconceivable. The thing is intolerable. The thing can and will 
never happen. 

I speak of these things in order that you may realize, my fellow 
citizens, the solemnity and the significance of this debate in which 
we are engaged; its solemnity because it involves the honor of the 
United States and the peace of humanity, its significance because 
whether gentlemen plan it or not, not only refusal on our part, but 
long hesitation on our part to cast our fortunes permanently in with 
the fortunes of those who love right and liberty will be to bring 
mankind again into the shadow of that valley of death from which 
we have just emerged. I was saying to some of your fellow citizens 
to-day how touching it had been to me as I came across the continent 
to have women whom I subsequently learned had lost their sons or 
their husbands come and take my hand and say, " God bless you, 
Mr. President." Why should they say "God bless" me? I advised 
the Congress of the United States to take the action which sent their 
sons to their death. As Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, 
I ordered their sons to their death. Why should they take my hand 
and with tears upon their cheeks say, " God bless you " ? Because 
they understood, as I understood, as their sons who are dead upon the 
fields of France understood, that they had gone there to fight for a 
great cause, and, above all else, they had gone there to see that in 
subsequent generations women should not have to mourn their dead. 
And as little children have gathered at every station in playful light- 
heartedness about the train upon which I was traveling, I have felt as 
if I were trustee for them. I have felt that this errand that I am 
going about upon was to save them the infinite sorrows through 

141677— S. Doc. 120, 66-1 16 



242 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

which the world has just passed, and that if by any evil counsel or 
unhappy mischance this great enterprise for which we fought should 
fail, then women with boys at their breasts ought now to weep, be- 
cause when those lads come to maturity the great battle will have to 
be fought over again. 

And, my fellow citizens, there is another battle of which we are 
now upon the eve. That is the battle for the right organization of 
industrial society. I do not need to tell an audience in this great pro- 
gressive State what I mean by that. We can not work out justice in 
our communities if the world is to continue under arms and ready for 
war. We must have peace, we must have leisure of mind and detach- 
ment of purpose, if we are going to work out the great reforms for 
which mankind is everywhere waiting. I pray God that normal times 
may not much longer be withheld from us. The world is profoundly 
stirred. The masses of men are stirred by thoughts which never 
moved them before. We must not again go into the camp. We must 
sit down at the council table and,. like men and brethren, lovers of lib- 
erty and justice, see that the right is done, see that the right is done 
to those who bear the heat and burden of the day, as well as to those 
who direct the labor of mankind. I am not a partisan of any party to 
any of these contests, and I am not an enemy of anybody except the 
minority that tries to control. I do not care where the minority is 
drawn from, I do not care how. influential or how insignificant, I do 
not care which side of the labor question it has been on, if the power 
of the United States under my direction can prevent the domination 
of a minority, it will be prevented. I am a champion of that sort of 
peace, that sort of order, that sort of calm counsel out of which, and 
out of which alone, can come the satisfactory solutions of the prob- 
lems of society. You can not solve the problems of society amidst 
chaos, disorder, and strife. You can only solve them when men have 
agreed to be calm, agreed to be just, agreed to be conciliatory, agreed 
that the right of the weak is as majestic as the right of the strong; 
and when we have come to that mind in the counsels of nations we 
can then more readily come to that mind in our domestic counsels, 
upon which the happiness and prosperity of our own beloved people 
so intimately and directly depend. 

I beg, my fellow citizens, that you will carry this question home 
with you, not in little pieces, not with this, that, and the other detail 
at the front in your mind, but as a great picture including the whole 
of the Nation and the whole of humanity, and know that now is the 
golden hour when America can at last prove that all she has promised 
in the day of her birth was no dream but a thing which she saw in its 
concrete reality, the rights of men, the prosperity of nations, the 
majesty of justice, and the sacredness of peace. 



ADDRESS AT LUNCHEON, PALACE HOTEL, SAN FRAN- 
CISCO, CALIF., 

SEPTEMBER 18, 1919. 



Mr. Toastmaster, my fellow countrymen, I stood here yesterday, 
but before a very different audience, an audience that it was very de- 
lightful to address, and it is no less delightful to find myself face 
to face with this thoughtful group of citizens of one of the most 
progressive States in the Union. Because, after all, my fellow citi- 
zens, our thought must be of the present and the future. The men 
who do not look forward now are of no further service to the Nation. 
The immediate need of this country and of the world is peace not 
only, but settled peace, peace upon a definite and well-understood 
foundation, supported by such covenants as men can depend upon, 
supported by such purposes as will permit of a concert of action 
throughout all the free peoples of the world. The very interesting 
remarks of your toastmaster have afforded me the opportunity to 
pay the tribute which they earn to the gentlemen with whom I was 
associated on the other side of the water. I do not believe that we 
often enough stop to consider how remarkable the peace conference 
in Paris has been. It is the first great international conference 
which did not meet to consider the interests and advantages of the 
strong nations. It is the first international conference that did not 
convene in order to make the arrangements which would establish 
the control of the strong. I want to testify that the whole spirit of 
the conference was the spirit of men who do not regard themselves 
as the masters of anybody, but as the servants of the people whom 
they represent. I found them quick with sympathy for the peoples 
who had been through all these dolorous ages imposed upon, upon 
whom the whole yoke of civilization seemed to have been fastened 
so that it never could be taken off again. 

The heart of this treaty, my fellow citizens, is that it gives liberty 
and independence to people who never could have got it for them- 
selves, because the men who constituted that conference realized 
that the basis of war was the imposition of the will of strong na- 
tions upon those who could not resist them. You have only to 
take the formula of the recent war in order to see what was the mat- 
ter. The formula of Pan-Germanism was Bremen to Bagdad. 

243 



244 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

What is the line from Bremen to Bagdad? It leads through par- 
titioned Poland, through prostrated Roumania, through subjugated 
Slavia, down through disordered Turkey, and on into distressed 
Persia, and every foot of the line is a line of political weakness. 
Germany was looking for the line of least resistance to establish 
her power, and unless the world makes that a line of absolute re- 
sistance this war will have to be fought over again. You must 
settle the difficulties which gave occasion to the war or you must ex- 
pect war again. You know what had happened all through that 
territory. Almost everywhere there were German princes planted on 
thrones where they did not belong, where they were alien, where 
they were of a different tradition and a different people, mere agents 
of a political plan, the seething center of which was that unhappy 
city of Constantinople, where, I dare say, there was more intrigue 
to the square inch than there has ever been anywhere else in the 
world, and where not the most honest minds always but generally 
the most adroit minds were sent to play upon the cupidity of the 
Turkish authorities and upon the helplessness of the Balkan States, 
in order to make a jfield for European aggression. I am not now 
saying that Germany was the only intriguer. I am not now saying 
that hers was the only plans of advantage, but I am saying that 
there was the field where lay the danger of the world in regard to 
peace. Every statesman in Europe knew it, and at last it dawned 
upon them that the remedy was not balances of power but liberty 
and right. 

An illumination of profound understanding of human affairs 
shines upon the deliberations of that conference that never shone 
upon the deliberations of any other international conference in his- 
tory, and therefore it is a happ} 7 circumstance to me to be afforded 
the .opportunity to say how delightful it was to find that these 
gentlemen had not accepted the American specifications for the 
peace — for you remember the} 7 were the American specifications — ■ 
because America had come in and assisted them and because America 
was powerful and they desired her influence and assistance, but be- 
cause they already believed in them. When we uttered our prin- 
ciples, the principles for which we were fighting, they had only to 
examine the thoughts of their own people to find that those were 
also the principles for which their people were fighting as well as 
the people of the United States; and the delightful enthusiasm 
which showed itself in accomplishing some of the most disinterested 
tasks of the peace was a notable circumstance of the whole confer- 
ence. I was glad after I inaugurated it that I drew together the 
little body which was called the big four. We did not call it the 
big four; we called it something very much bigger than that. We 
called it the supreme council of the principal allied and associated 



ADDKESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 245 

powers. We had to have some name, and the more dramatic it was 
the better; but it was a very simple council of friends. The inti- 
macies of that little room were the center of the whole peace con- 
ference, and they were the intimacies of men who believed in the 
same things and sought the same objects. The hearts of men like 
Clemenceau and Lloyd-George and Orlando beat with the people of 
the world as well as with the people of their own countries. They 
have the same fundamental sympathies that we have, and they 
know that there is only one way to work out peace and that is to 
work out right. 

The peace of the world is absolutely indispensable to us, and im- 
mediately indispensable to us. There is not a single domestic prob- 
lem that can be worked out in the right temper or opportunely and 
in time unless we have conditions that we can count on. I do not 
need to tell business men that they can not conduct their business if 
they do not know what is going to happen to-morrow. You can not 
make plans unless you have certain elements in the future upon 
which you can depend. You can not seek markets unless you know 
whether you are going to seek them among people who suspect you 
or people who believe in you. If the United States is going to stand 
off and play truant in this great enterprise of justice and right then 
you must expect to be looked 'upon with suspicion and hostile rivalry 
everywhere in the world. . They will say, " These men are not intend- 
ing to assist; they are intending to exploit us." You know what 
happened just a few months before we went into the war. There 
was a conference at Paris consisting of representatives of the princi- 
pal allied powers for the purpose of concerting a sort of economic 
league in which they would manage their purchasing as well as their 
selling in a way which would redound to their advantage and make 
use of the rest of the world. That was because they then thought 
what they will be obliged to think again if we do not continue our 
partnership with them — that we were standing off to get what we 
could out of it, and they were making a defensive economic arrange- 
ment. Very well ; they will do that again. Almost of instinct the} 7 
will do it again, not out of a deliberate hostility to the United States 
but 'by the general instinctive impulse of their own business interest 
and their own business men. Therefore we can not arrange a single 
element of our business until we have settled peace and know 
whether we are going to deal with a friendly world or an unfriendly 
world. 

We can not determine our own internal economic reforms until 
then, and there must be some very fundamental economic reforms in 
this country. There must be a reconsideration of the structure of our 
economic society. Whether we will or no, the majority of mankind 
demand it, in America as well as elsewhere, and we have got to sit 



246 ADDEESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

down in the best temper possible, in times of quiet, in times permit- 
ting conciliation and not hostility, and determine what we are going 
to do. We can not do it until we have peace. We can not release the 
great industrial and economic power of America and let it run free 
until there are channels that are free in which it can run. And the 
channels of business are mental channels as well as physical channels. 
In an open market men's minds must be open. It has been said so 
often that it is a very trite saying, but it remains nevertheless true, 
that a financial panic is a mere state of mind. There are no fewer 
resources in a country at the time of a panic than there were the day 
before it broke. There is no less money, there is no less energy, there 
is no less individual capacity and initiative, but something has 
frightened everybody and credits are drawn in and everybody builds 
a fence around himself and is careful to keep behind the fence and 
wait and see what is going to happen. That is a panic. It is a 
waiting, a fearftil expecting of something to happen. Generally it 
does not happen. Generally men slowly get their breath again and 
say, "Well, the world looks just the same as it did ; we had better get 
to work again." Even when business is absolutely prostrate they 
are at least in the condition that a friend of mine described. He was 
asked at the time of one of our greatest panics, some 25 years ago, if 
business was not looking up. He said, " Yes ; it is so flat on its back 
that it can not look any other way." Even if it is flat on its back, it 
can see the world ; it is not lying on its fact, and it will presently sit 
up and begin to take a little nourishment and take notice, and the 
panic is over. But while the whole world is in doubt what to expect, 
the whole world is under the partial paralysis that is characteristic of 
a panic. You do not know what it is safe to do with your money 
now. You do not know what plans it is safe to make for your 
business now. You have got to know what the world of to-morrow is 
going to be, and you will not know until Ave have settled the great 
matter of peace. 

I want to remind you how the permanency of peace is at the heart 
of this treaty. This is not merely a treat}* of peace with Germany. 
It is a world settlement; not affecting those parts of the world, of 
course, which were not involved in the war, because the conference had 
no jurisdiction over them, but the war did extend to most parts of the 
world, and the scattered, dismembered assets of the Central Empires 
and of Turkey gave us plenty to do and covered the greater part of 
the distressed populations, of the world. It is nothing less than a 
world settlement, and at the center of that stands this covenant for 
the future which we call the covenant of the league of nations. 
Without it the treaty can not be worked, and without it it is a mere 
temporary arrangement with Germany. The covenant of the league 
of nations is the instrumentality for the maintenance of peace. 



ADDEESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 247 

How does it propose to maintain it ? By the means that all for- 
ward-looking and thoughtful men have desired for generations to- 
gether, by substituting arbitration and discussion for war. To hear 
some gentlemen talk you would think that the council of the league of 
nations is to spend its time considering when to advise other people 
to fight. That is what comes of a constant concentration of atten- 
tion upon article 10. Article 10 ought to have been somewhere 
further down in the covenant, because it is in the background: it 
is not in the foreground. I am going to take the liberty of ex- 
pounding this to you, though I assume that you have all read the 
covenant. At the heart of that covenant are these tremendous ar- 
rangements : Every member of the league solemnly agrees — and let 
me pause to say that that means every fighting nation in the world, 
because for the present, limited to an army of 100,000, Germany is 
riot a fighting nation — that it will never go to war without first hav- 
ing done one or another of two things, without either submitting 
the matter in dispute to arbitration, in which case it promises abso- 
lutely to abide by the verdict, or, if it does not care to submit it to 
arbitration, without submitting it to discussion by the council of the 
league of nations, in which case it promises to lay all the documents 
and all the pertinent facts before that council; it consents that 
that council shall publish all the documents and all the pertinent 
facts, so that all the world shall know them ; that it shall be allowed 
six months in which to consider the matter; and that even at the 
end of the six months, if the decision of the council is not acceptable, 
it will still not go to war for three months following the rendering 
of the decision. So that, even allowing no time for the prelimi- 
naries, there are nine months of cooling off, nine months of discus- 
sion, nine months not of private discussion, not of discussion between 
those who are heated, but of discussion between those who are disin- 
terested except in the maintenance of the peace of the world, when the 
purifying and rectifying influence of the public opinion of mankind 
is brought to bear upon the contest. If anything approaching that 
had been the arrangement of the world in 1914, the war would have 
been impossible; and I confidently predict that there is not an ag- 
gressive people in the world who would dare bring a wrongful pur- 
pose to that jury. It is the most formidable jury in the world. 
Personally, I have never, so far as I know, been in danger of going 
to jail, but I would a great deal rather go to jail than do wrong and 
be punished merely by the look in the eyes of the men amongst whom 
I circulated. I would rather go to jail than be sent to Coventry. 
I would rather go to jail than be conscious every day that I was 
despised and distrusted. After all, the only overwhelming force in 
the world is the force of opinion. 



248 ADDKESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

If any member of the league ignores these promises with regard 
to arbitration and discussion, what happens? War? No; not war, 
but something more tremendous, I take leave to say, than war. An 
absolute isolation, a boycott. It is provided in the covenant that any 
nation that disregards these solemn promises with regard to arbitra- 
tion and discussion shall be thereby deemed ipso facto to have com- 
mitted an act of war against the other members of the league, and 
that there shall thereupon follow an absolute exclusion of that nation 
from communication of any kind with the members of the league. 
No goods can be shipped in or out; no telegraphic messages can be 
exchanged, except through the elusive wireless perhaps; there shall 
be no communication of any kind between the people of the other 
nations and the people of that nation. There is not a nation in 
Europe that can stand that for six months. Germany could have 
faced the armies of the world more readily than she faced the boy- 
cott of the world. Germany felt the pinch of the blackade more than 
she felt the stress of the blow ; and there is not, so far as I know, a 
single European country — I say European because I think our own 
country is an exception — which is not dependent upon some other 
part of the world for some of the necessaries of its life. Some of 
them are absolutely dependent, some of them are without raw mate- 
rials practically of any kind, some of them are absolutely without 
fuel of any kind, either coal or oil; almost all of them are without 
that variety of supply of ores which are necessary to modern indus- 
try and necessary to the manufacture of munitions of war. When you 
apply that boycott, you have got your hand upon the throat of the 
offending nation, and it is a proper punishment. It is an exclusion 
from civilized society. 

Inasmuch as I have sometimes been said to have been very dis- 
regardful of the constitutional rights of Congress, may I not stop 
to speak just for a moment of a small matter that I was punctilious 
to attend to in regard to that article? You will notice the language 
that any member of the league that makes breach of its covenants 
shall be regarded thereby "ipso facto to have committed an act of 
war." In the original draft it read, "Shall thereby be ipso facto re- 
garded as at war with the other nations of the world." I said, 
"No; I can not subscribe to that, because I am bound to safeguard 
the right of Congress to determine whether it is at war or not. I 
consent to its being an act of war by the party committing it, but 
whether Congress takes up the gage thus thrown down or not is 
another matter which I can not participate in determining in a doc- 
ument of this sort." Germany committed several acts of war against 
us before we accepted the inevitable and took up her challenge, and 
it was only because of a sort of accumulation of evidence that Ger- 
many's design was not merely to sink American ships and injure 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 249 

American citizens, that was incidental to her design, but that her 
design was to destroy free political society. I remember saying to 
Congress before we went into the war that if Germany committed 
some act of war against us that was intolerable. I might have to 
give them different advice, and I remember a newspaper correspon- 
dent asked me what I thought would constitute such an act. I said, 
"I don't know, but I am perfectly certain I will know it when I 
see it. I can not hypothetically define it, but it will be perfectly 
obvious when it occurs." And if Congress regards this act by some 
other member of the league as such an act of war against it as neces- 
sitates the maintenance of the honor of the United States, then it 
may in those circumstances declare war, but it is not bound to de- 
clare war under the engagement of the covenant. What I am em- 
phasizing, my fellow citizens, is this : That the heart of this covenant 
is arbitration and discussion, and that is the only possible basis for 
peace in the future. 

It is a basis for something better than peace. Civilization proceeds 
on the principle of understanding one another. You know peace 
between those who employ labor and those who labor depends upon 
conference and mutual understanding. If you do not get together 
with the other side, it will be hostility to the end; and after you 
have heard the case of the other fellow it sometimes becomes a 
little awkward for you to insist upon the whole of your case, because 
the human mind does have this fine quality — that it finds it em- 
barrassing to face the truth and deny it. Moreover, the basis of 
friendship is intercourse. I know — I am very fond of — a very large 
number of men whom I know to be crooks. They are very engaging 
fellows, and when I form a judgment against them I have to be in 
another room. I can not, because of my personal attitude toward 
them, form a harsh judgment; indeed, I suppose the very thing that 
gives some men the chance to be crooks is their fascinating person- 
ality. They put it over on you. You remember that very charming 
remark of Charles Lamb. One night, in company with some friends 
who were speaking of some person not present, Lamb, in his stutter- 
ing fashion, said, " I — I — I h — hate that fellow." Some one said, 
" Why, Charles, I didn't know you knew him." " Oh, I — I d — d — 
don't," he said, " I — I c — cant h — h — hate a m — man I — I know." 
That is one of the most genial utterances of the human spirit I have 
ever read, and one of the truest. It is mighty hard to hate a fellow 
you know, and it is mighty hard to hate a nation you know. If you 
had mixed, as I have had the good fortune to mix, with scores of 
people of other nations in recent months, you would have the same 
feeling that I do if, after you got over superficial matters like 
differences of language and some differences of manner, they were 
the same kind of folks. 



250 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

As I have said to a number of audiences on this trip, the most 
thrilling thing that happened to me over there was the constant inter- 
course I was having with delegations of people representing nations 
from all over the globe, some of which, I had shamefacedly to admit, 
I had never heard of before. Do you know where Adjur-Badjan is? 
Well, one day there came in a very dignified and interesting group 
of gentlemen from Adjur-Badjan. I did not have time until they 
were gone to find out where they came from, but I did find this out 
immediately, that I was talking to men who talked the same language 
that I did in respect of ideas, in respect of conceptions of liberty, in 
respect of conceptions of right and justice, and I did find this out, 
that they were, with all the ether delegations that came to see me, 
metaphorically speaking, holding their hands out to America and 
saying, " You are the disciples and leaders of the free peoples of the 
world; can't you come and help us?" Until we went into this war, 
my fellow citizens, it was the almost universal impression of the 
world that our idealism was a mere matter of words ; that what we 
were interested in was getting on in the world and making as much 
as we could out of it. That was the sum and substance of the usual 
opinion of us outside of America ; and in the short space that we were 
in this war that opinion was absolutely reversed. 

Consider what they saw: The flower of our youth sent three and 
four thousand miles away from their home, a home which could not 
be directly touched by the flames of that war, sent to foreign fields 
to mix with foreign and alien armies to fight for a cause which they 
recognized as the common cause of mankind, and not the peculiar 
cause of America. It caused a revulsion of feeling, a revulsion 
of attitude which, I dare say, has never been paralleled in the world : 
and at this moment, unless the cynical counsels of some of our ac- 
quaintances should prevail — which God forbid — they are expecting 
and inviting us to lead the civilized world, because they trust us — 
they really and truly trust us. They would not believe, no matter 
where we sent an army to be of assistance to them, that we would 
ever use that army for any purpose but to assist them. They know 
that when we say, as we said when we sent men to Siberia, that we 
are sending them to assist in the distribution of food and clothing 
and shoes so that brigands will not seize them, and that for the rest 
we are ready to render any assistance which they want us to render, 
and will interfere in absolutely nothing that concerns their own 
affairs, we mean it, and they believe us. There is not a place in this 
world now, unless we wait a little while longer, where America's po- 
litical ambitions are looked upon with suspicion. That was frankly 
admitted in this little conference that I have spoken of. Not one of 
those gentlemen thought that America had any ulterior designs 
whatever. They were, therefore, in all our conferences, in consult- 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 251 

ing our economical experts, in consulting our geographical experts, 
constantly turning to America to act as umpire; and in nine cases 
out of ten, just because America was disinterested and could look at 
the thing without any other purpose than reaching a practicable 
solution, it Avas the American solution that was accepted. 

In order that we may not forget, I brought with me the figures 
as to what this war meant to the world. This is a body of business 
men, and you will understand these figures. They are too big for 
the imagination of men who do not handle big things. Here is the 
cost of the war in money, exclusive of what we loaned one another : 
Great Britain and her dominions, $38,000,000,000; France, $26,000,- 
000,000: the United States, $22,000,000,000 (this is the direct cost 
of our operations): Russia, $18,000,000,000; Italy, $13,000,000,000; 
and the total, including Belgium. Japan, and other countries, 
$123,000,000,000. This is what it cost the Central Powers : Germany, 
$39,000,000,000, the biggest single item; Austin-Hungary, $21,000,- 
000,000: Turkey and Bulgaria, $3,000,000,000; a total of $63,000,- 
000,000. and a grand total of direct war costs of $186,000,000,000— 
almost the capital of the world. The expenditures of the United 
States were at the rate of $1,000,000 an hour for two years, including 
nighttime with daytime. The battle deaths during the war vvere as 
follows: Russia lost in dead 1,700,000 men, poor Russia that got 
nothing but terror and despair out of it all; Germany, 1,600,000; 
France. 1.385.000: Great Britain, 900,000; Austria, 800,000; Italy, 
364,000; the United States, 50,300 dead. The total for all the bellig- 
erents, 7,450,200 men — just about seven and a half million killed be- 
cause we could not have arbitration and discussion, because the world 
had never had the courage to propose the conciliatory methods which 
some of us are now doubting whether we ought to accept or not. 
The totals for wounded are not obtainable except our own. Our own 
wounded were 230,000, excluding those who were killed. The total 
of all battle deaths in all the wars of the world from the year 1793 
to 1914 was something under 6,000,000 men, so that about a million 
and a half more men were killed in this war than in all the wars of 
something more than 100 preceding years. We really can not realize 
that. Those of us who lost sons or brothers can realize it. We 
know what it meant. The women who have little children crowding 
about their knees know what it means; they know that the world 
has hitherto been devoted to brutal methods of settlement, and that 
every time a war occurs it is the flower of the manhood that is de- 
stroyed; that it is not so much the present generation as the next 
generation that goes maimed off the stage or is laid away in obscure 
graves upon some battle field; and that great nations are impaired 
in their vitality for two generations together and all their life em- 



252 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WDLSON. 

bitter ed by a method of settlement for which we could find, and 
have now found, a substitute. 

My fellow citizens, I believe in Divine Providence. If I did not, 
I would go crazy. If I thought the direction of the disordered 
affairs of this world depended upon our finite intelligence, I should 
not know how to reason my way to sanity, and I do not believe 
that there is any body of men, however they concert their power or 
their influence, that can defeat this great enterprise, which is the 
enterprise of divine mercy and peace and good will. 



ADDRESS AT BERKELEY, CALIF. 

SEPTEMBER 18, 1919. 



Dean Jones, Mr. Mayor, ladies and gentlemen, I feel an old feeling 
come over me as I stand in this presence, and my great danger and 
temptation is to revert to type and talk to you as college men and 
women from a college man. I was reminded as I received your very 
generous welcome of a story told of Mr. Oliver Her ford, a very 
delightful wit and artist. He was one day sitting in his club, and 
a man came by who did not know him very well, but who took many 
liberties, He slapped him on the back and said, " Hello, Ollie, old 
boy, how are you ? " Herf ord writhed a little under the blow, looked 
at him a little coldly, and said : " I don't know your name ; I don't 
know your face; but your manners are very familiar." I can say 
to you young ladies and gentlemen, I do not know your names or 
your faces, but your manners are very familiar, and very delight- 
fully familiar. I think also of a rebuke I used often to address to 
my classes. I used to say that the trouble about the college youth 
of America was that it refused to grow up ; that the men and women 
alike continued to be schoolboys and schoolgirls. I used to remind 
them that on the continent of Europe revolutions often began in the 
universities, and statesmen were nervous of nothing so much as of 
the concerted movements of opinion at the centers of learning; and 
I asked them what Cabinet at Washington ever cared a peppercorn 
what they were thinking about. It is your refusal, my fellow stu- 
dents, to grow up. One reason I am glad to see that the boys who 
have been at the front come back is that they have grown up ; they 
have seen the world ; seen it at its worst, but nevertheless seen it in 
action; seen it with its passions in action; seen it with its savage 
and its liberal passions in action. They have come back to know 
what they are preparing for, to know the kind of world that they 
are going to go out in, not to do physical fighting, but to do the 
kind of thinking that is better than fighting, the kind of thinking 
that makes men conscious of their duties, the kind of thinking that 
purifies the impulses of the world and leads it on to better things. 

The burden that is upon my heart as I go about on this errand 
is that men are hesitating to give us the chance. We can not do any 
effective thinking for the world until we know that there is settled 
peace. We can not make any long plans for the betterment of man- 

253 



254 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

kind until these initial plans are made, and we know that there is 
going to be a field and an opportunity to make the plans that will 
last and that will become effective. That is the ground of my impa- 
tience with the debate. I admit that there are debatable things, 
but I do not admit that they need be debated so long. Not only that, 
but I do insist that they should be debated more fairly. A remark 
was repeated to me that was made after the address I made in San 
Francisco last night. Some man said that after hearing an exposi- 
tion of what was really in the treaty he was puzzled ; he wondered 
what the debate was about; it all seemed so simple. That was not, 
I need not assure you, because I was misleading anybody or telling 
what was not in the treaty, but because the men he had heard de- 
bate it, some of the newspapers he had heard debate it, had not told 
him what was in the treaty. This great document of human rights, 
this great settlement of the world, had been represented to him as 
containing little traps for the United States. Men had been going 
about dwelling upon this, that, and the other feature and distort- 
ing the main features and saying that that was the peace proposed. 
They are responsible for some of the most serious mistakes that have 
ever been made in the history of this country; they are responsible 
for misleading the opinion of the United Sttaes. It is a very dis- 
tressing circumstance to me to find that when I recite the mere 
facts they are novel to some of my fellow citizens. Young gentle- 
men and young ladies, what we have got to do is to see that that 
sort of thing can not happen. We have got to know what the truth 
is and insist that everybody shall know what the truth is, and, above 
all things else, we must see that the United States is not defeated 
of its destiny, for its destiny is to lead the world in freedom and 
in truth. 



ADDRESS AT AUDITORIUM, OAKLAND, CALIF., 

SEPTEMBER 18, 1919. 



Dr. Rinehart, my fellow citizens, you have indeed warmed my 
heart with your splendid welcome and I esteem it a great privilege 
to stand here, before you, to-night to look at some of the serious as- 
pects of the great turning point in the history of this Nation and the 
history of the world which affairs have brought us to. Dr. Rinehart 
expressed my own feeling when she said that in my own consciousness 
those great ranks of little children seemed to me my real clients, 
seemed to be that part of my fellow citizens for whom I am plead- 
ing. It is not likely, my fellow citizens, that with the depleted re- 
sources of the great fighting nations of Europe, there will be another 
war soon, but unless we concert measures to prevent it, there will be 
another and a final war, at just about the time these children come 
to maturity; and it is our duty to look in the face the real circum- 
stances of the world in order that we may not be unfaithful to the 
great duty which America undertook in the hour and day of her 
birth. 

One thing has been impressed upon me more than another as I 
have crossed the continent, and that is that the people of the United 
States have been singularly and, I sometimes fear deliberately, mis- 
led as to the character and contents of the treaty of peace. Some one 
told me that after an address I delivered in San Francisco last night 
one of the men who had been present, a very thoughtful man I was 
told, said that after listening to what I had said he wondered what 
the debate was about, it all seemed so simple, so obvious, so natural. 
I was at once led to reflect that that was not the cause of any gift of 
exposition that I have, but because I had told that audience what the 
real character and purpose of the covenant of nations is. They had 
been led to look at certain incidental features of it, either on the as- 
sumption that they had not read the document or in the hope that 
they would not read it and would not realize what the real contents 
of it were. I have not come out from Washington, my fellow citi- 
zens, on a speech-making tour. I do not see how anybody could get 

his own consent to think of the way in which he was saying the things 

255 



256 ADDKESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

that it is necessary for me to say. I should think that every man's 
consciousness would be fixed, as my own is, upon the critical destiny 
of the world which hangs upon the decision of America. I am con- 
fident what that decision is going to be because I can see the tide 
of sentiment and the tide of conviction rising in this country in such 
a manner that any man who tries to withstand it will be overwhelmed. 
But we are an intelligent and thoughtful people; we want to know 
just what it is that we are about, and if you will be patient with me 
I am going to try to point out some of the things I did not dwell 
upon last night that are the salient and outstanding characteristics 
of this treaty. 

I am not going to speak to-night particularly of the covenant of 
the league of nations. I am going to point out to you what the 
treaty as a whole is. In the first place, of course, that treaty imposes 
upon Germany the proper penalty for the crime she attempted to 
commit. It is a just treaty in spite of its severity. It is a treaty 
made by men who had no intention of crushing the German people, 
but who did mean to have it burnt into the consciousness of the 
German people, and through their consciousness into the apprehen- 
sion of the world, that no people could afford to live under a Govern- 
ment which was not controlled by their purpose and will and which 
was at liberty to impose secret ambitions upon the civilization of the 
world. It was intended as notice to all mankind that any Govern- 
ment that attempted what Germany attempted would meet with the 
same concerted opposition of mankind and would have meted out to 
it the same just retribution. All that this treaty amounts to, so far 
as Germany is concerned, is that she shall be obliged to pay every 
dollar that she can afford to pay to repair the damage that she did ; 
except for the territorial arrangements which it includes, that is 
practically the whole of the treaty so far as it concerns Germany. 
What has not been borne in upon the consciousness of some of our 
people is that, although most of the words of the treaty are devoted 
to the settlement with Germany, the greater part of the meaning of 
its provisions is devoted to the settlement of the world. 

The treaty begins with the covenant of the league of nations, which 
is intended to operate as a partnership, a permanent partnership, of 
the great and free self-governing peoples of the world to stand 
sponsor for the right and for civilization. Notice is given in the very 
first articles of the treaty that hereafter it will not be a matter of con- 
jecture whether the other great nations of the world will combine 
against a wrongdoer, but a matter of certainty that hereafter nations 
contemplating what the Government of Germany contemplated will 
not have to conjecture whether Great Britain and France and Italy 
and the great United States will join hands against them, but will 
know that mankind, in serried ranks, will defend to the last the 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 257 

rights of human beings wherever they are. This is the first treaty 
ever framed by such an international convention, whose object 
was not to serve and defend governments but to serve and defend 
peoples. This is the first people's treaty in the history of international 
dealings. Every member of that great convention of peace was 
poignantly aware that at last the people of the world were awake, 
that at last the people of the world were aware of what wrong had 
been wrought by irresponsible and autocratic governments, that -at 
last all the peoples of the world had seen the vision of liberty, had 
seen the majesty of justice, had seen the doors thrown open to the 
aspirations of men and women and the fortunes of children every- 
Avhere, and they did not dare assume that they were the masters of 
the fortunes of any people, but knew that in every settlement they 
must act as the servants not only of their own people but of the 
people wdio were waiting to be liberated, the people w T ho could not 
win their own liberty, the people who had suffered for centuries to- 
gether the intolerable wrongs of misgovernment. This is a treaty not 
merely for the peoples avIio were represented at the peace table but 
for the people who were the subjects of the governments whose 
wrongs were forever ended by the victory on the fields of France. 

My fellow citizens, you know and you hear it said every day, you 
lead it in the newspapers, you hear it in the conversation of your 
friends, that there is unrest all over the world. You hear that in 
eevry part of the world, not excluding our own beloved country, 
there are men who feel that society has been shaken to its founda- 
tions, and that it ought to have been shaken to its foundations, in 
order that men might be awakened to the wrongs that had been done 
and were continuing to be done. When you look into the history, 
not of our own free and fortunate continent, happily, but of the rest 
of the world, you will find that the hand of pitiless power has been 
upon the shoulders of the great mass of mankind since time began, 
and that only with that glimmer of light which came at Calvary, 
that first dawn which came with the Christian era, did men begin to 
wake to the dignity and right of the human soul, and that in spite 
of professions of Christianity, in spite of purposes of reform, in 
spite of theories of right and of justice, the great body of our fellow 
beings have been kept under the will of men who exploited them and 
did not give them the full right to live and realize the purposes that 
God had meant them to realize. There is little for the great part of 
the history of the world except the bitter tears of pity and the hot 
tears of wrath, and when you look, as Ave were permitted to look in 
Paris, into some of the particular wrongs which the peoples of Cen- 
tral Europe, the peoples upon whom the first foundations of the 
new German power were to be built, had suffered for generations 

141677— S. Doc. 120. 06-1 17 



258 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

together, you wonder why they lay so long quiet, you wonder why 
men, statesmen, men who pretended to have an outlook upon the 
world, waited so long to deliver them. The characteristic of this 
treaty is that it gives liberty to peoples who never could have won it 
for themselves. By giving that liberty, it limits the ambitions and 
defeats the hopes of all the imperialistic governments in the world. 
Governments which had theretofore been considered to desire do- 
minion, here in this document forswore dominion, renounced it, said, 
" The fundamental principle upon which we are going to act is this, 
that every great territory of the world belongs to the people who 
live in it and that it is their right and not our right to determine the 
sovereignty they shall live under and the form of government they 
shall maintain." It is astonishing that this great document did not 
come as a shock upon the world. If the world had not already been 
rent by the great struggle which preceded this settlement, men would 
have stood at amaze at such a document as this ; but there is a subtle 
consciousness throughout the world now that this is an end of gov- 
erning people who do not desire the government that is over them. 

And, going further than that, the makers of the treaty proceeded 
to arrange, upon a cooperative basis, those things which had always 
been arranged before upon a competitive basis. I want to mention 
a very practical thing, which most of you, I dare say, never thought 
about. Most of the rivers of Europe traverse the territory of several 
nations, and up to the time of this peace conference there had been 
certain historic rights and certain treaty rights over certain parts of 
the courses of those rivers which had embarrassed the people who 
lived higher up upon the streams; just as if the great Mississippi, for 
example, passed through half a dozen States and the people down at 
New Orleans lived under a government which could control the navi- 
gation of the lower part of the Mississippi and so hamper the com- 
merce of the States above them to the north which wished to pass to 
the sea by the courses of the Mississippi. There were abundant in- 
stances of that sort in Europe, and this treaty undertakes to inter- 
nationalize all the great waterways of that continent, to see to it that 
their several portions are taken out of national control and put under 
international control, so that the stream that passes through one 
nation shall be just as free in all its length to the sea as if that 
nation owned the whole of it, and nobody shall have the right to put 
a restriction upon their passage to the sea. I mention this in order 
to illustrate the heart of this treaty, which is to cut out national 
privilege and give to every people the full right attaching to the 
territory in which they live. 

Then the treaty did something more than that. You have heard 
of the covenant of the league of nations until, I dare say, you sup- 
pose that is the only thing in the treaty. On the contraiy, there is a 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 259 

document almost as extensive in the latter part of the treat}* which is 
nothing less than a great charter of liberty for the working men and 
women of the world. One of the most striking and useful provisions 
of the treaty is that every member of the league of nations undertakes 
to advance the humane conditions of labor for men, women, and 
children, to consider the interests of labor under its own jurisdiction, 
and to try to extend to every nation with which it has any dealings 
the standards of labor upon which it itself insists; so that America, 
which has b} r no means yet reached the standards in those matters 
which we must and shall reach, but which, nevertheless, is the most 
advanced in the world in respect of the conditions of labor, under- 
takes to bring all the influence it can legitimately bear upon every 
nation with which it has any dealings to see that labor there is put 
upon as good a footing as labor in America. Perhaps some of you 
have not kept in mind the seamen's act which was passed in a recent 
session of Congress. Under the law before that act, seamen could be 
bound to the service of their ship in such fashion that when they 
came to the ports of the United States, if they tried to leave their 
ship, the Government of the United States was bound to arrest them 
and send them back to their ship. The seamen's act abrogates that 
law and practically makes it necessary for every ship that would take 
away from the United States the crew that it brings to it shall pay 
American wages to get it. Before this treaty was entered into the 
United States had entered upon the business of trying to extend to 
laboring men elsewhere the advantages which laboring men in the 
United States enjoy, and supplementing that promise in the covenant 
of the league there is an elaborate arrangement for a periodic inter- 
national conference in the interest of labor. It provides that that 
conference shall be called next month in the city of Washington by 
the President of the United States, and the President of the United 
States has already called it. We are awaiting to learn from the Sen- 
ate of the United States whether we can attend it or not. We can at 
least sit and listen and wonder how long we are going to be kept out 
of membership of this great humane endeavor to see that working 
men and women and children everywhere in the world are regarded 
as human beings and taken care of as they ought to be taken care of. 
This treaty does not stop there. It attempts to coordinate all tn^ 
great humane endeavors of the world. It tries to bring under inter- 
national cooperation every effort to check international crime. I 
mean like that unspeakable traffic in women, like that almost equally 
unspeakable traffic in children. It undertakes to control the dealing 
in deadly drugs like opium. It organizes a new method of coopera- 
tion among all the great Red Cross societies of the world. I tell you, 
my fellow citizens, that simple red cross has come to mean to the 
world more than it ever meant before. Everywhere — in the remotest 



260 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

recesses of the world — there are people who wear that symbol, and 
every time I look at it I feel like taking off my hat, as if I had seen 
a symbol of the world's heart. This treaty is nothing less than an 
organization of liberty and mercy for the world. I wish you would 
get a copy of it and read it, A good deal of it is technical and you 
could skip that part, but read all of it that you do not need an expert 
to advise you with regard to the meaning of. The economic and 
financial clauses which particularly affect the settlements with Ger- 
many are. I dare say, almost unintelligible to most people, but you 
do not have to understand them; they are going to be worked out by 
experts. The rest of it is going to be worked out by the experience 
of free self -governed peoples. 

One of the interesting provisions of the covenant of the league of 
nations is that no nation can be a member of that league which is not 
a self-governing nation. No autocratic government can come into its 
membership ; no government which is not controlled by the Avill and 
vote of its people. It is a league of free, independent peoples, all over 
the world, and when that great arrangement is consummated there 
is not going to be a ruler in the world that does not take his advice 
from his people. Germany is for the present excluded, but she is 
excluded only in order that she may undergo a period of probation, 
during which she shall prove two things — first, that she has really 
changed her constitution permanently, and, second, that she intends 
to administer that constitution in the spirit of its terms. You read 
in the newspapers that there are intrigues going on in Germany for 
the restoration of something like the old government, perhaps for 
the restoration of the throne and placing upon it some member of 
the family of Hohenzollern. Very well, if that should be accom- 
plished Germany is forever excluded from the league of nations. It 
is not our business to say to the German people what sort of govern- 
ment they shall have; it is our fundamental principle that that is 
their business and not ours, but it is our business to say whom we will 
keep company with, and if Germany wishes to live in respectable 
society she will never have another Hohenzollern. The other day, 
you will notice, Hungary for a little while put one of the Austrian 
princes upon her throne, and the peace conference, still sitting in 
Paris, sent word that they could not deal with a government which 
had one of the Hapsburgs at its head. The Hapsburgs and the 
Hohenzollerns are permanently out of business. I dare say that 
they personally, from what I can learn, feel antiquated and out of 
date. They are out of date because, my fellow citizens, this Great 
War, with its triumphant issue, marks a new day in the history of 
the world. There can no more be any such attempts as Germany 
made if the great leading free people of the world lends its counte- 
nance and leadership to the enterprise. I say if. but it is a mere 



ADDRESSES OF PEESIDENT WILSON. 261 

rhetorical if. There is not the least danger that America, after a 
treaty has been drawn up exactly along the specifications stipulated 
by America, will desert its associates. We are a people that redeems 
its honor. We are not, and never will be. quitters. 

You notice that one of the grounds of anxiety of a small group of 
our fellow citizens is whether they can get out of the league if they 
ever get in, and so they want to have the key put in their pockets; 
they want to be assigned a seat right by the door; they want to sit 
on the edge of their chairs and say, "If anything happens in this 
meeting to which I am in the least sensitive. I leave." That, my fel- 
low citizens, is not the spirit of America. What is going to happen 
is this : We are not going to sit by the door ; we are going to sit in 
the high seats, and if the present attitude of the peoples of the world 
toward America is any index of what it will continue to be, the 
counsels of the United States will be the prevailing counsels of the 
league. If we were humbly at the outset to sit by the door, we would 
be invited to go up and take the chair. I, for one, do not want 
to be put in the attitude of children who, when the game goes against 
them, will not play, because I have such an unbounded confidence in 
the rectitude of the purpose of the United States that I am not 
afraid she will ever be caught proposing something which the other 
nations will defeat. She did not propose anything in Paris which 
the other nations defeated. The only obstacles, the only insuperable 
obstacles, met there were obstacles which were contained in treaties 
of which she had no notice, in secret treaties which certain great 
nations were bound in honor to respect, and the covenant of the 
league of nations abolishes secret treaties. From this time forth all 
the world is going to know what all the agreements between nations 
are. It is going to know, not their general character merely, but 
their exact language and contents, because the provision of the league 
is that no treaty shall be valid which is not registered with the gen- 
eral secretary of the league, and the general secretary of the league 
is instructed to publish it in all its details at the earliest possible 
moment. Just as you can go to the courthouse and see all the mort- 
gages on all the real estate in your count} 7 , you can go to the general 
secretariat of the league of nations and find all the mortgages on all 
the nations. This treaty, in short, is a great clearance house. It is 
very little short of a canceling of the past and an insurance of the 
future. 

Men have asked me. " Do you think that the league of nations is 
an absolute guaranty against war? " Of course it is not; no human 
arrangement can give you an absolute guaranty against human pas- 
sion, but I answer that question with another, " If you thought you 
had 50 per cent insurance against war, would not you jump at it? 
If you thought you had 30 per cent insurance against war, would 



262 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

not you take it? If you thought you had 10 per cent insurance 
against war, would not you think it better than nothing? " Whereas, 
in my judgment, this is 99 per cent insurance, because the one thing 
that a wrong cause can not stand is exposure. If you think that you 
have a friend who is a fool, encourage him to hire a hall. The par- 
ticular thing that this treaty provides in the covenant of the league 
of nations is that every cause shall be deliberately exposed to the 
judgment of mankind. It substitutes what the whole world has 
long been for, namely, arbitration and discussion for war. In other 
words, all the great fighting nations of the world — for Germany for 
the time being, at any rate, is not a great fighting nation — promise 
to lay their case, whatever it may be, before the whole jury of hu- 
manity. If there had been any arrangement comparable with this 
in 1914, the calamitous war which we have just passed through would 
have been inconceivable. 

Look what happened. The Austrian crown prince was assas- 
sinated inside the Austrian dominions, in Bosnia, which was under 
the Empire of Austria-Hungary, though it did not belong to it, and 
Austria had no business to have it; and because it was suspected 
that the assassination was connected with certain groups of agitators 
and certain revolutionary societies in Serbia war was made on 
Serbia, because the Austrian crown prince was assassinated in Aus- 
tria ! Just as if some great personage were to be assassinated, let us 
say, in Great Britain, and because the assassin was found to have so- 
ciety connections — I mean certain connections with a society that 
had an active membership — in the United States, Great Britain 
should declare war on the United States. That is a violently im- 
probable supposition, but I am merely using it as an illustration. 
Every foreign office in Europe, when it got sudden news of what was 
afoot, sent messages to its representative in Berlin asking the Ger- 
man Government to hold an international conference to see if the 
matter could not be adjusted, and the German Government would 
not wait 24 hours. Under the treaty of the league of nations every 
fighting nation is bound to wait at least nine months, and to lay all 
the facts pertinent to the case before the whole world. There is 
nothing so overpowering and irresistible, my fellow citizens, as the 
opinion of mankind. One of the most interesting and, I think, in 
one wa} 7 , one of the most moving sentences in the great Declaration 
of Independence, is one of the opening sentences — " that out of re- 
spect to the opinion of mankind the causes which have led the people 
of" the American Colonies to declare their independence are here set 
forth." America was the first country in the world which laid be- 
fore all mankind the reason why it went to war, and this treaty is 
the exaltation and permanent establishment of the American prin- 
ciple of warfare and of right. Why, therefore, do we hesitate to 



ADDKESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 263 

redeem the destiny of America? Why do we hesitate to support 
the most American thing that has ever been attempted? Why do 
we debate details when the heart of the thing is sound? And the 
beauty of it, my fellow citizens, is that the heart of America is 
sound. 

We sent our boys across the sea to beat Germany, but that was 
only the beginning. We sent them across the sea to assure the world 
that nothing such as Germany attempted should ever happen again. 
That is the halo that is going to be about the brows of these fine boys 
that have come back from overseas. That is the light that is going 
to rest upon the graves oversea of the boys we could not bring back. 
That is the glory that is going to attach to the memories of that 
great American Army, that it made conquest of the armies of Ger- 
many not only, but made conquest of peace for the world. Greater 
armies than sought the Holy Grail, greater armies than sought to 
redeem the Holy Sepulchre, greater armies than fought under that 
visionary and wonderful girl, Joan of Arc, greater than the armies 
of the American Revolution that sought to redeem us from the un- 
just rule of Britain, greater even than the armies of our Civil War 
which saved the Union, will be this noble army of Americans who 
saved the world ! 



ADDRESS AT STADIUM, SAN DIEGO, CALIF., 
SEPTEMBER 19, 1919. 



Mr. Mayor, my fellow countrymen, as you know. I have come from 
Washington on a very serious errand, indeed, and I need not tell you 
with what a thrill the sight of this great body of my fellow citizens 
fills my heart, because I believe that one of the most important ver- 
dicts of history has now to be rendered by the great people of the 
United States. I believe that this is a choice from which we can not 
turn back. Whether it be the choice of honor or of dishonor, it will 
be a final choice that we shall make in this great hour of our history. 

One of the most unexpected things that I have found on my journey 
is that the people of the United States have not been informed as to 
the real character and scope and contents of the great treaty of peace 
with Germany. W r hether by omission or by intention, they have been 
directed in all of the speeches that I have read to certain points of 
the treaty which are incidental, and not central, and their attention 
has been drawn away from the real meaning of this great human 
document. For that, my fellow citizens, is just what it is. It not 
only concludes a peace with Germany and imposes upon Germany 
the proper penalties for the outrage she attempted upon mankind, 
but it also concludes the peace in the spirit in which the war was 
undertaken by the nations opposed to Germany. The challenge of 
war was accepted by them not with the purpose of crushing the 
German people but with the purpose of putting an end once and for 
all to such plots against the free governments of the world as had 
been conceived on Wilhelmstrasse, in Berlin, unknown to the people 
of Germany, unconceived by them, advised by little groups of men 
who had the military power to carry out private ambitions. 

We went into this war not only to see that autocratic power of that 
sort never threatened the world again but we went into it for even 
larger purposes than that. Other autocratic powers may spring up. 
but there is only one soil in which they can spring up, and that is 
the wrongs done to free peoples of the world. The heart and center 
of this treaty is that it sets at liberty people all over Europe and in 
Asia who had hitherto been enslaved by powers which Avere not their 
rightful sovereigns and masters. So long as wrongs like that exist in 

265 



266 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

the world, you can not bring permanent peace to the world. I go 
further than that. So long as wrongs of that sort exist, you ought 
not to bring permanent peace to the world, because those wrongs 
ought to be righted, and enslaved peoples ought to be free to right 
them. For my part, I will not take any part in composing difficulties 
that ought not to be composed, and a difficulty between an enslaved 
people and its autocratic rulers ought not to be composed. We in 
America have stood from the day of our birth for the emancipation 
of people throughout the world who were living unwillingly under 
governments which were not of their own choice. The thing which 
we have held more sacred than any other is that all just government 
rests upon the consent of the governed, and all over the world that 
principle has been disregarded, that principle has been flouted by the 
strong, and only the weak have suffered. The heart and center of 
this treaty is the principle adopted not only in this treaty but put 
into effect also in the treaty with Austria, in the treaty with Hun- 
gary, in the treaty with Bulgaria, in the treaty with Turkey, that 
every great territory in the world belongs to the people who are 
living on it, and that it is not the privilege of any authority any- 
where — certainly not the privilege of the peace conference at Paris — 
to impose upon those peoples any government which they accept 
unwillingly and not of their own choice. 

Nations that never before saw the gleam of hope have been lib- 
erated by this great document. Pitiful Poland, divided up as spoils 
among half a dozen nations, is by this document united and set free. 
Similarly, in the treaty with Austria, the Austrian power is taken off 
of every people over whom it had no right to reign. You know that 
the great populations of Bosnia and Herzigovina, which lay between 
Austria and the Balkan Peninsula, were unjustly under the power of 
the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and it was in a city of Bosnia that 
the Crown Prince of Austria was assassinated — Bosnia which was 
under the power of Austria. Though Bosnia was part of Austrian 
territory, Austria had the audacity to hold Serbia, an outside neigh- 
bor, responsible for an act of assassination on Austrian territory, the 
Austrian Government choosing to believe that certain societies with 
which it connected the assassin, societies active in Serbia, had 
planned and executed the assassination. So the world was deluged 
In blood, and 7,400,000 men lie dead — not to speak of the pitiful 
wounded, not to speak of the blinded, not to speak of those with dis- 
tracted brain, not to speak of all the pitiful, shattered nerves of mil- 
lions of men all over the word — because of an insurgent feeling in a 
great population which was ruled over by rulers not of their own 
choice. The peace conference at Paris knew that it would not go to 
the root of this matter unless it destroyed power of that kind. This 
treaty sets those great peoples free. 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 267 

But it does not stop with that. In the heart of the treaty you 
will find a new charter for those who labor — men, women, and chil- 
dren all over the world. The heart of the world is depressed, my 
fellow citizens, the heart of the world is uneasy. The heart of the 
world is a little despairful of its future, because the economic ar- 
rangements of the world have not been just, and the people who are 
having unjust conditions imposed upon them are, of course, not con- 
tent to live under them. When the whole world is at unrest you may 
be sure that there is some real cause for the unrest. It is not whim- 
sical. Men do not disturb the foundations of their lives just to 
satisfy a sudden impulse. All these troubles, whatever shape they 
may take, whether the action taken is just or unjust, have their root 
in age-long wrongs which ought to be, must be, and will be righted, 
and this great treaty makes a beginning in that great enterprise of 
humanity. It provides an arrangement for recurrent and periodic 
international conferences, the main and sole object of which will be 
to improve the conditions of labor, to safeguard the lives and the 
health of women and children who work and whose lives would 
otherwise be impaired or whose health rendered subject to all the 
inroads of disease. The heart of humanity beats in this document. 
It is not a statesman's arrangement. It is a liberation of the peo- 
ples and of the humane forces of the world, and yet I never hear the 
slightest intimation of any of these great features in the speeches 
of the gentlemen who are opposing this treaty. They never tell 
you what is really in this treaty. If they did your enthusiasm would 
sweep them off their feet. If they did they would know that it was 
an audacity which they had better not risk to impair the peace and 
the humane conditions of mankind. 

At the very front and heart of the treaty is the part which is most 
criticized, namely, the great covenant for a league of nations. This 
treaty could not be executed without such a powerful instrumen- 
tality. Unless all the right-thinking nations of the world are going 
to concert their purpose and their power, this treaty is not worth 
the paper that it is written on, because it is a treaty where peace 
rests upon the right of the weak, and only the power of the strong 
can maintain the right of the weak. If we as a nation indeed mean 
what we have always said, that we are the champions of human 
right, now is the time when we shall be brought to the test, the acid 
test, as to whether we mean what we said or not. I am not saying 
that because I have the least doubt as to the verdict. I am just as 
sure of it as if it had been rendered already. I know this great 
people among whom I was born and bred and whom I have had the 
signal honor to serve, whose mouthpiece it has been my privilege 
to be on both sides of the water, and I know that I am speaking their 



268 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

conscience, when I speak in the name of my own conscience that that 
is the duty of America and that it will be assumed and performed. 

Yon have been led to believe that the covenant of the league of 
nations is in some sense a private invention. It is not always said 
of whom, and I need not mention who is suspected. It is supposed 
that out of some sort of personal ambition or party intention an 
authorship, an origination is sought. My fellow countrymen, I 
wish that I could claim the great distinction of having invented 
this great idea, but it is a great idea which has been growing in the 
minds of all generous men for several generations. Several genera- 
tions? Why, it has been the dream of the friends of humanity 
through all the ages, and now for the first time a great body of prac 
tical statesmen, immersed in the business of individual nations, gets 
together and realizes the dream of honest men. I wish that I could 
claim some originative part in so great an enterprise, but I can not. 
I was the spokesman in this matter, so far as I was influential at all, 
of all sorts and kinds of Americans and of all parties and factions 
in America. I would be ashamed, my fellow countiwmen, if I treated 
a matter of this sort with a single thought of so small a matter as 
the national elections of 1920. If anybody discusses this question on 
the basis of party advantage, I repudiate him as a fellow 7 American. 
And in order to validate what I have said, I want to make one or 
two quotations from representatives of a party to which I do not 
belong. The first I shall make from a man who has for a long time 
been a member of the United States Senate. In May, 1916, just about 
two years after the Great War began, this Senator, at a banquet at 
which I was myself present, uttered the following sentences : 

" I know, and no one I think can know 7 better than one who has 
served long in the Senate, which is charged with an important share 
of the ratification and confirmation of all treaties, no one can, I 
think, feel more deeply than I do the difficulties which confront us 
in the work which this league — that is, the great association extend- 
ing throughout the country known as the League to Enforce Peace — 
undertakes, but the difficulties can not be overcome unless we try to 
overcome them. I believe much can be done. Probably it will be 
impossible to stop all wars, but it certainly Avill be possible to stop 
some wars, and thus diminish their number. The way in which this 
problem is to be worked out must be left to this league and to those 
who are giving this great subject the study which it deserves. I 
know the obstacles. I know how quickly we shall be met with the 
statement that this is a dangerous question which yon are putting 
into your agreement, that no nation can submit to the judgment 
of other nations, and we must be careful at the beginning not to 
attempt too much. I know the difficulties which arise when we 
speak of anything which seems to involve an alliance, but I do not 



ADDRESSES OP PRESIDENT WILSOX. 269 

believe that when Washington warned us against entangling alliances 
lie meant for one moment that we should not join with the other 
civilized nations of the world if a method could be found to diminish 
war and encourage peace. 

ki It was a year ago/' he continues. " in delivering the chancellor's 
address at Union College, I made an argument on this theory, that if 
we were to promote international peace at the close of the present ter- 
rible war, if Ave were to restore international law as it must be re- 
stored, we must find some way in which the united forces of the na- 
tions could be put behind the cause of peace and law. I said then 
that my hearers might think that I was picturing a Utopia, but it is 
in the search for Utopias that great discoveries have been made. 
Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. This league certainly has the 
highest of all aims for the benefit of humanity, and because the path- 
way is sown with difficulties is no reason that we should turn from it/' 

The quotation is from the Hon. Henry Cabot Lodge. I read 
another quotation from one of the most energetic, practical, and dis- 
tinguished leaders of the Republican Party, uttered in an article 
published in the New York Times in October, 1919 : 

" The one permanent move for obtaining peace which has yet been 
suggested with any reasonable chance of obtaining its object is by an 
.agreement among the great powers, in which each should pledge itself 
not only to abide by the decisions of a common tribunal, but to back 
with force the decision of that common tribunal. The great civilized 
nations of the world which do possess force, actual or immediately 
potential, should combine by solemn agreement in a great world 
league for the peace of righteousness.' ' A very worthy utterance by 
Theodore Roosevelt. I am glad to align myself with such utterances 
as those. I subscribe to every word of them. And here in concrete 
form is the fulfillment of the plan which they advocate. We can not 
in reason, Ave can not as loA T ers of liberty. Ave can not as supporters 
of right turn away from it. 

What are those who advise us to turn away from it afraid of? 
In the first place, they are afraid that it impairs in some way that 
long traditional policy of the United States Avhich Avas embodied in 
the Monroe doctrine, but how they can fear that I can not conceive, 
for the document expressly says in words which I am iioav quoting 
that nothing in this covenant shall be held to affect the validity of 
the Monroe doctrine. The phrase Avas inserted under my oavh eye, 
at the suggestion — not of the phrase but the principle — of the For- 
eign Relations Committees of both Houses of Congress. I think 
I am justified in dismissing all fear that the Monroe doctrine is in 
the least impaired. And Avhat is the Monroe doctrine? It is that 
no outside poAver shall attempt to impose its will in any form upon 
the Western Hemisphere, and that if it does the United States, act- 



270 ADDKESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

ing upon its own initiative and alone, if it chooses, can resist and 
will resist the attempt. Could anything leave the United States 
freer as a champion of the independence of the Western Hemisphere 
than this world acknowledgment of the validity and potency of the 
Monroe doctrine? 

They are afraid that the league will in some way deal with our 
domestic affairs. The covenant expressly says that it will have no 
right to deal with the domestic affairs of any member of the league,, 
and I can not imagine anything more definite or satisfactory than 
that. There is no ambiguity about any part of this covenant, for 
the matter of that, but there is certainly no ambiguity about the 
statement concerning domestic affairs, for it is provided that if any 
matter brought before the council is found to be a matter which,, 
under international law, lies within the exclusive jurisdiction of the 
State making the claim, the council shall dismiss consideration of 
it and shall not even make a report about it. And the subjects which 
are giving these gentlemen the most concern are agreed by all 
students of international law to be domestic questions ; for example,, 
immigration, naturalization, the tariff — these are the subjects most 
frequently spoken of. No one of those can be dealt with by the 
league of nations, so far as the sovereignty of the United States is 
concerned. We have a perfectly clear field there, as we have in re- 
gard to the Monroe doctrine. 

It is feared that our delegates will be outvoted, because I am con- 
stantly hearing it said that the British Empire has six votes and we 
have one. I am perfectly content to have only one when the one counts 
six, and that is exactly the arrangement under the league. Let us 
examine that matter a little more particularly. Besides the vote of 
Great Britain herself, the other five votes are the votes of Canada, of 
South Africa, of Australia, of New Zealand, and of India. We our- 
selves were champions and advocates of giving a vote to Panama, of 
giving a vote to Cuba — both of them under the direction and pro- 
tectorate of the United States — and if a vote was given to Panama 
and to Cuba, could it reasonably be denied to the great Dominion of 
Canada ? Could it be denied to that stout Kepublic in South Africa, 
that is now living under a nation which did, indeed, overcome it at 
one time, but which did not dare retain its government in its hands, 
but turned it over to the very men whom it had fought? Could we 
deny it to Australia, that independent little Eepublic in the Pacific,, 
which has led the world in so many liberal reforms? Could it be 
denied New Zealand ? Could we deny it to the hundreds of millions 
who live in India ? But, having given these six votes, what are the 
facts ? For you have been misled with regard to them. The league can 
take no active steps without the unanimous vote of all the nations 
represented on the council, added to a vote of the majority in the 



ADDKESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 271 

assembly itself. These six votes are in the assembly, not in the 
council. The assembly is not a voting body, except upon a limited 
number of questions, and whenever those questions are questions of 
action, the affirmative vote of every nation represented on the council 
is indispensable, and the United States is represented on the council. 
The six votes that you hear about can do nothing in the way of action 
without the consent of the United States. There are two matters in 
which the assembly can act, but I do not think we will be jealous of 
those. A majority of the assembly can admit new members into the 
league. A majority of the assembly can advise a member of the 
league to reconsider airy treaty which in the opinion of the assembly 
of the league is apt to conflict with the operation of the league itself, 
but that is advice which can be disregarded, which has no validity of 
action in it, which has no compulsion of law in it. With the single 
exception of admitting new members to the league, there is no energy 
in the six votes which is not offset by the energy in the one vote of the 
United States, and I am more satisfied to be one and count six than to 
be six and count only six. This thing that has been talked about is a 
delusion. The United States is not easily frightened, and I dare say 
it is least easily frightened by things that are not true. 

It is also feared that causes in which we are interested will be 
defeated. Well, the United States is interested in a great many 
causes, for the very interesting and compelling reason that the United 
States is made up out of all the civilized peoples of the world. There 
is not a national cause, my fellow citizens, which has not quickened 
the heartbeat of men in America. There is not a national cause which 
men in America do not understand, because they come of the same 
blood, they come of the same traditions, they recollect through long- 
tradition the wrongs of their peoples, the hopes of their peoples, the 
passions of their peoples, and everywhere in America there are kins- 
men to stand up and speak words of sympathy for great causes. For 
the first time in the history of the world, the league of nations pre- 
sents a forum, a world forum, where any one of these ambitions or 
aspirations can be brought to the consideration of mankind. Never 
before has this been possible. Never before has there been a jury of 
mankind to which nations could take their causes, whether they were 
weak or strong. You have heard a great deal about article 10 of the 
covenant. Very well, after you have read it suppose you read article 
11. Article 11 provides that it shall be the friendly right of any 
member of the league, big or little, strong or weak, to call attention 
to anything, anywhere, which is likely to disturb the peace of the 
world or the good understanding between nations upon which the 
peace of the world depends. When anybody of kin to us in America 
is done wrong by any foreign government, it is likely to disturb the 
good understanding between nations upon which the peace of the 



272 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

world depends, and thus any one of the causes represented in the 
hearts of the American people can be brought to the attention of 
the whole world. One of the most effective means of Avinning a good 
cause is to bring it before that great jury. A bad cause will fare ill, 
but a good cause is bound to be triumphant in such a forum. Until 
this, international laAv made it an unfriendly act for any nation to 
call attention to any matter which did not immediately affect its own 
fortunes and its own right. I am amazed that so many men do not 
see the extraordinary change which this will bring in the transaction 
of human affairs. I am amazed that they do not see that now, for 
the first time, not selfish national policy but the general judgment 
of the Avorld as to right is going to determine the fortunes of peoples, 
whether they be weak or whether they be strong, and I myself glory 
in the provisions of article 11 more than I glory in any other part 
of the covenant, for it draws all men together in a single friendly 
court, where they may discuss their own affairs and determine the 
issues of justice — just exactly what was desired in the hearts of the 
men from whom I have read extracts of opinion. 

But what disturbs me, perhaps the only thing that disturbs me, my 
fellow countrymen, about the form which the opposition to the league 
is taking is this : Certain reservations, as they are called, are proposed 
which in effect — I am not now stopping to form an opinion as to 
Avhether that is the intention or not; I have no right to judge the 
intention of a man who has not stated what his intention is — which 
in effect amount to this, that the United States is unwilling to assume 
the same obligations under the covenant of the league that are as- 
sumed by the other members of the league; that the United States 
wants to disclaim any part in the responsibility which the other mem- 
bers of the league are assuming. I want to say with all the emphasis 
of which I am capable that that is unworthy of the honor of the 
United States. The principle of justice, the principle of right, the 
principle of international amity is this, that there is not only an 
imaginary but a real equality of standing and right among all the 
sovereign peoples of the world. I do not care to defend the rights 
of a people if I must regard them as my inferiors, if I must do so 
with condescension, if I must do so because I am strong and they are 
weak. You know the men. and the women, too, I dare say, who are 
respectful only to those whom they regard as their social equals or 
their industrial equals and of whom they are more or less afraid, who 
will not exercise the same amenities and the same consideration for 
those whom they deem beneath them. Such people do not belong in 
democratic society, for one thing, and, for another, their whole 
point of view is perverted; they are incapable of justice, because the 
foundation of justice is that the weakest has the same rights as the 
strongest. I must admit, my fellow citizens, and you can not den} T — 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 273 

and I admit it with a certain profound regret not only but with a 
touch of shame — that while that is the theory of democratic institu- 
tions it is not always the practice. The weak do not always fare 
as well as the strong, the poor do not always get the same advantage 
of justice that the rich get; but that is due to the passions and im- 
perfections of human nature. The foundation of the law, the glory 
of the law, is that the weakest is equal to the strongest in matter of 
right and privilege, and the goal to which we are constantly though 
stumblingly and with mistakes striving to go forward is the goal of 
actual equality, of actual justice, upon the basis of equality of rights, 
and unless you are going to establish the society of nations upon the 
actual foundation of equality, unless the United States is going to 
assume the same responsibility and just as much responsibility as the 
other nations of the world we ought not to commit the mockery of 
going into the arrangement at all. 

I will not join in claiming under the name of justice an unjust 
position of privilege for the country I love and honor. Neither 
am I afraid of responsibility. Neither will I scuttle. Neither will 
I be a little American. America, in her make-up, in her purposes, 
in her principles, is the biggest thing in the world, and she must 
measure up to the measure of the world. I will be no party in be- 
littling her. I will be no party in saying that America is afraid of 
responsibilities which I know she can carry and in which in carrying 
I am sure she shall lead the world. Why, if we were to decline to go 
into this humane arrangement we would be declining the invitation 
which all the world extends to us to lead them in the enterprise of 
liberty and of justice. I, for one, will not decline that invitation. I, 
for one, believe more profoundly than in anything else human in 
the destiny of the United States. I believe that she has a spiritual 
energy in her which no other nation can contribute to the liberation 
of mankind, and I know that the heart of America is stronger than 
her business calculations. That is what the world found out when 
we went into the war. When we went into the war there was" not a 
nation in the world that did not believe we were more interested in 
making money out of it than in serving the cause of liberty. And 
when we went in, in those few months the whole world stood at amaze 
and ended with an enthusiastic conversion. They now believe that 
America will stand by anybody that is fighting for justice and for 
right, and we shall not disappoint them. 

The age is opening, my fellow citizens, upon a new scene. We 
are substituting in this covenant — and this is the main purpose of it — 
arbitration and discussion for war. Senator Lodge says if we can 
stop some wars it is worth while. If you want insurance against war, 
I take it you would rather have 10 per cent insurance than none; I 

141677— S. Doc. 120, 66-1 18 



274 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

take it that you would be delighted with 50 per cent insurance ; and 
here I verily believe is 99 per cent insurance against war. Here are 
all the great fighting nations of the world, with the exception of 
Germany — because for the time being Germany is not a great fight- 
ing nation — solemnly covenant with one another that they will never 
go to war without first having either submitted the matter in dispute 
to arbitration and bound themselves to abide by the verdict, or, hav- 
ing submitted it to discussion by the council of the league of nations 
in which case they will lay all the facts aud documents by publication 
before the world, wait six months for the opinion of the council, and 
if they are dissatisfied with that opinion — for they are not bound by 
it — they will wait another three months before they go to wai. 
There is a period of nine months of the process which is absolutely 
destructive of unrighteous causes — exposure to public opinion. 
When I find a man who in a public matter will not state his side of 
the case, and state it fully, I know that his side of the case is the 
losing side, that he dare not state it. 

At the heart of most of our industrial difficulties, my fellow citi- 
zens, and most of you are witness to this, lies the unwillingness of 
men to get together and talk it over. Half of the temper which now 
exists between those who perform labor and those who direct labor 
is due to the fact that those who direct labor will not talk differences 
over with the men whom they employ, and I am in every such 
instance convinced that they are wrong and dare not talk it over. 
Not only that, but every time the two sides do get together and 
talk it over they come out of the conference in a different temper 
from that with which they went in. There is nothing that softens 
the attitude of men like really, frankly laying their minds alongside 
of each other and their characters alongside of each other and mak- 
ing a fair and manly and open comparison. That is what all the 
great fighting nations of the world agree to with every matter of 
difference between them. They put it either before a jury by whom 
they are bound or before a jury which will publish all the facts to 
mankind and express a frank opinion regarding it. 

You have here what the world must have, what America went 
into this war to obtain. You have here an estoppel of the brutal, 
sudden impulse of war. You have here a restraint upon the pas- 
sions of ambitious nations. You here have a safeguard of the liberty 
of weak nations, and the world is at last ready to stand up and in 
calm counsel discuss the fortunes of men and women and children 
everywhere. Why, my fellow citizens, nothing brings a lump into 
my throat quicker on this journey I am taking than to see the 
thronging children that are everywhere the first, just out of childish 
curiosity and glee, no doubt, to crowd up to the train when it stops, 
because I know that if by any chance we should not win this great 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 275 

light for the league of nations it would be their death warrant. 
They belong to the generation which would then have to fight the 
final war, and in that final war there would not be merely seven and 
a half million men slain. The very existence of civilization would 
be in the balance, and I for one dare not face the responsibility of 
defeating the very purpose for which we sent our gallant men over- 
seas. Every mother knows that her pride in the son that she lost 
is due to the fact, not that he helped to beat Germany, but that he 
helped to save the world. It was that light the other people saw 
in the eyes of the boys that went over there, that light as of men who 
see a distant horizon, that light as of men who have caught the 
gleam and inspiration of a great cause, and the armies of the United 
States seemed to those people on the other side of the sea like bodies 
of crusaders come out of a free nation to give freedom to their fel- 
lows, ready to sacrifice their lives for an idea, for an ideal, for the 
only thing that is worth living for, the spiritual purpose of redemp- 
tion that rests in the I earts of mankind. 



ADDRESS AT SAN DIEGO, CALIF. 
SEPTEMBER 19, 1919. 



Mr. Mayor, ladies, and gentlemen, it is very agreeable to have 
been indirectly introduced by my friend Mr. Gage, for whom I have 
so affectionate a regard. I know he will not mind my saying that I 
first met him when we were both " lame ducks." I had just come 
out of the hospital after an operation and he had one arm out of 
commission from neuritis, and we met sitting, rather helplessly and 
perhaps hopelessly, on one of the broad piazzas of one of the hotels 
at Palm Beach. Being fellow sufferers and comrades in misery, we 
were drawn toward each other and drawn into confidences which I 
greatly enjoyed, and which I now recall with peculiar pleasure in 
seeing Mr. Gage without his hand bound. up and in the sort of health 
I would wish to see him in. What he has said has reminded me of 
one of the thoughts which has been prominent in my mind of late. 
He has spoken of our dealings with the Philippine Islands. One of 
the perplexities under which we have suffered is that, although we are 
leading the Philippine Islands toward independence, we were in 
doubt of what would happen to them when they obtained their inde- 
pendence. Before this conference at Paris, the only thing that could 
be suggested was that we should get a common guaranty from all 
the nations of the world that the Philippines should be regarded 
as neutral, just as Belgium was once regarded as neutral, and that 
they should guarantee her inviolability, because it was certainly to 
be expected that she would not be powerful enough to take care of 
herself against those who might wish to commit aggression against 
her. That serves as a very useful illustration of one of the purposes 
for which the league of nations has been established, for do you not 
observe that the moment we are ready to give independence to the 
Philippines her independence is already guaranteed, because all the 
great nations of the world are under engagement of the most solemn 
sort to respect and preserve her territorial integrity and her exist- 
ing political independence as against external aggression? Those 
words " external aggression " are sometimes left out of the exposition 
of article 10. There was not a member of that peace conference with 
whom I conferred who did not hold the same opinion that I hold 

277 



278 ADDKESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

as to the sacred right of self-determination and did not hold the 
principle which all Americans hold, that it was not the right of any 
nation to dictate to another nation what sort of government it should 
have or under what sort of sovereignty it would live. 

For us the problem of the future of the Philippines is solved by 
the league of nations. It is the first time that the world has come 
to this mind about matters of that sort, and what brought it to that 
mind? The breakdown of the neutrality of Belgium. You know 
you can not establish civil society if anybody is going to be a neutral 
with regard to the maintenance of the law. We are all bound in 
conscience, and all public officers are bound in oath, not to remain 
neutral with regard to the maintenance of the law and the vindica- 
tion of the right, and one of the things that occurred in this confer- 
ence, as a sort of practical joke on myself, was this: One of the prin- 
ciples that I went to Paris most insisting on was the freedom of the 
seas. Now, the freedom of the seas means the definition of the right 
of neutrals to use the seas when other nations are at war, but under 
the league of nations there are no neutrals, and, therefore, what I 
have called the practical joke on myself was that by the very thing 
that I was advocating it became unnecessary to define the freedom 
of the seas. All nations are' engaged to maintain the right, and in 
that sense no nation can be neutral when the right is invaded, and, 
all being comrades and partners in a common cause, we all have an 
equal right to use the seas. To my mind it is a much better solution 
than had occurred to me, or than had occurred to anyone else with 
regard to that single definition of right. 

We have no choice, my fellow citizens, in this matter except be- 
tween these alternatives: We must go forward with this concert of 
nations or we must go back to the old arrangement, because the 
guaranties of peace will not be sufficient without the United States, 
and those who oppose this covenant are driven to the necessity of 
advocating the old order of balances of power. If you do not have 
this universal concert, you have what we have always avoided, neces- 
sary alignment of this or that nation with one other nation or with 
some other group of nations. What is disturbing me most about the 
present debate — not because I doubt its issue, but because I regret 
its length — is that it is heartening the representatives of Germany 
to believe that at last they are going to do in this way what they were 
not able to do by arms, separate us in interest and purpose from our 
associates in the war. I am not suggesting, I have no right to sug- 
gest, that the men who are opposing this covenant have any thought 
of assisting Germany in their minds, but my point is that by doing 
what they are doing they are assisting Germany, whether they want 
to do so or not. And it is not without significance, my fellow coun- 
trymen, that coincidental!? with this debate there has been a revival 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 279. 

of the pro-German propaganda all over the United States, for this 
is Germany's calculation that, inasmuch as she is obliged to stand 
apart and be for the time suspected and have other nations come 
slowly to accommodation with her, if we hold off other nations will 
be similarly alienated from us, as they will be, and that there wi 
be, whether we design it or not, a community of interest between the 
two isolated nations. It is an inevitable psychological result. We 
must join this arrangement to complete the psychology of this war. 

The psychology of this war is this, that any nation that attempts 
to do what Germany did will certainly have the world combined 
against it. Germany not only did not know she would have the 
world combined against her, but she never dreamed she would. Ger- 
many confidently expected that Great Britain would not go into the 
war ; she never dreamed that America would go into the war, and in 
order not absolutely to dishearten her people she had continuously 
to lie to them and tell them that the submarine warfare was so effec- 
tive that American troops could not be sent to Europe. Friends of 
mine who, before we went into the war, conversed with Germans on 
the other side and told them that they had come over since the sub- 
marine warfare began were not believed. The Germans said, " Why, 
you can not cross the sea." The body of the German people actually 
thought that the sea was closed, and that we could send 2,000,000 
men over there without losing any of them, except on a single trans- 
port, was incredible to them. If they had ever dreamed that that 
would happen they never Avould have ventured upon so foolish an 
attack upon the liberties of mankind. 

What is impressed upon my mind by my stay on the other side 
of the water more than any one thing is that, while old rivalries and 
old jealousies and many of the intricate threads of history woven in 
unhappy patterns have made the other nations of the world suspect 
one another, nobody doubts or suspects America. That is the amaz- 
ing and delightful discovery that I made on the other side of the 
water. If there was any place in our discussions where they wanted 
troops sent, they always begged that American troops might be sent, 
because they said none of the other associated powers would suspect 
them of any ulterior designs, and that the people of the country 
itself would know that they had not gone there to keep anything 
that they took, that they had not gone there to interfere with their 
internal affairs; that they had gone not as exploiters but as friends. 
That is the reputation of American soldiers throughout Europe, and 
it is their reputation because it is true, That is the beautiful back- 
ground of it. That is the temper in which they go ; that is the princi- 
ple upon which they act and upon which the Government back of 
them acts, and the great people whom that Government represents. 
There is something more than the choosing between peace and armed 




280 ADDKESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

isolation, for that is one aspect of the choice. We are choosing 
between a doubtful peace and an assured peace, guided and led by 
the United States of America. 

I was very much interested to scan the names on a very beautifully 
engrossed communication that was put in my hands to-day by Mr. 
Gage, a communication from the representatives of the League to 
Enforce Peace. I found upon it the names of many of the principal 
and most representative citizens and professional men of San 
Diego, and it happened, I believe, unless I am misinformed, that 
practically all the signers were Republicans. There is one thing 
against which I wish to enter a protest. I have had, I do not 
know how many, men come to me and say, " Mr. President, I am 
a Republican, but I am for the league of nations." Why but? For 
as a Democrat you will permit me to remind you who are Republicans 
that you have always boasted that your party was the party of con- 
structive programs. Here is the most constructive, the greatest con- 
structive, program ever proposed. Why should you say but? If I 
were in your place and had in my heart the pride which you very 
properly entertain because of the accomplishments of your party, 
I would say, " I am a Republican, and for that reason I am in favor 
of the league of nations." But I am not going to say that I am a 
Democrat, and therefore in favor of the league of nations, because 
I am not in favor of it because I am a Democrat. I am in favor of 
it because I am an American and a believer in humanity, and I be- 
lieve in my heart that if the people of this country, as I am going 
about now, were to suspect that I had political designs they would 
give me evident indication that they wanted me to go back to Wash- 
ington right away. They would not give me the splendid and de- 
lightful welcomes they are giving me. Men and women would not 
come up to me as they are doing now and take my hand in theirs 
and say, " Mr. President, God bless you ! " I wonder if you realize, 
as I have tried to realize, what that gracious prayer means. I have 
had women who had lost their dearest in the war come up to me with 
tears upon their cheeks and say, " God bless you ! " Why did they 
bless me? I advised the Congress to go into the war and to send 
their sons to their death. As Commander in Chief of the Army and 
Navy, I sent their sons to their death, and they died, and their 
mothers come and say "God bless you ! " There can be only one 
explanation. They are proud of the cause in which their sons died ; 
and, my friends, since we all have to die, the way those fellows died 
is the best way after all. There was nothing in it for them, no pos- 
sible personal gain, nothing except the noble performance of a dis- 
interested duty, and that is the highest distinction that any man 
can achieve. 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 281 

I remember years ago reading an essay that left a permanent im- 
pression on my mind. It was entitled " Christmas : Its Unfinished 
Business." It was a discourse upon what was then a very common 
occurrence — the meeting of assemblies to promote peace. You know, 
we used to be always having conventions to promote peace, and most 
of the men who sat on the platform were men who were doing every- 
thing they could to bring on war by unjustly exploiting other coun- 
tries and taking advantages that they should not take, that were 
sure to exasperate the feeling of people elsewhere. But they did not 
realize that they were really bringing on wars ; they, in their minds, 
were trying to bring on peace, and the writer of the essay called 
attention to this. His thesis was, " There will be peace when peace 
is as handsome as war." He hurried to explain that what he meant 
was this: That leaving aside the men who may have unjustly and 
iniquitiously plotted war — like the general staff in Germany — the 
men in the ranks gave everything that they had, their lives included, 
for their country, and that while you would always hang the boy's 
musket or the boy's sword up over the mantelpiece, you never would 
hang up his ledger or his yardstick or his spade; not that civil 
employments meant to support yourself are dishonorable, but that 
they are centered upon yourself, whereas the sword and the gun mean 
that you had forgotten yourself and remembered only the call of 
your country. Therefore, there was a certain sacredness about that 
implement that could not attach to any implement of civil life. 
" Now," said my essayist, " when men are devoted to the purposes 
of peace with the same self-forgetfulness and the same thought for 
the interest of their country and the cause that they are devoted to 
that they display under arms in war, then there will be no more 
war. When the motives of peace are as disinterested and as hand- 
some as the motives of war for the common soldier, then we will all 
be soldiers in an army of peace and there will be no more wars." 
Now, that comes about when there is a common conception of peace, 
and the heart of this covenant of peace is to bring nations together 
into consultation so that they will see which of their objects are com- 
mon, so that they will discuss how they can accommodate their in- 
terests, so that their chief objective will be conciliation and not 
alienation ; and when they understand one another, they will cooper- 
ate with one another in promoting the general interest and the com- 
mon peace. It is the parliament of nations at last, where everyone 
is under covenant himself to do right, to respect and preserve the 
territorial integrity and existing political independence of the others, 
and where everyone engages never to go to war without first trying 
to settle the matter by the slow-cooling, disinterested processes of 
discussion. It is what we have been striving for for generation after 
generation, and now some men hesitate to accept it when the golden 



282 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

thing is placed in their hand. It would be incredible to me if I did 
not understand some of them, but it is not permitted to one occupy- 
ing my present office to make personal remarks. After all, personal 
remarks are neither here nor there. What does any one of us matter 
in so great a thing as this? What difference does it make whether 
one man rises and another falls, or we all go down or go up together ? 
We have got to serve humanity. We have got to redeem the honor 
of the United States. We have got to see this thing through to its 
g,Teat end of justice and peace. 



ADDRESS AT HOTEL ALEXANDRIA, LOS ANGELES, 

CALIF., 

SEPTEMBER 20, 1919. 



Mr. Toastmaster and ladies and gentlemen, may I not first thank 
you, Mr. Toastmaster, for your very generous introduction? Ii 
spoke in the same delightful tone of welcome that I have heard in 
the voices on the street to-day, and, although I do not accept for 
myself the praise that you have so generously bestowed upon me, I 
nevertheless do recognize in it that you have set just the right note 
for the discussion which I wanted for a few moments to attempt. 

There is only one thing, my fellow citizens, that has daunted me 
on this trip. My good father used to teach me that you can not 
reason out of a man what reason did not put in him, and, suspect- 
ing — may I not say knowing — that much of the argument directed 
against the league of nations is not based upon reason, I must say I 
have sometimes been puzzled how to combat it, because it is true, 
as your toastmaster has said, that there is a great constructive plan 
presented, and no man in the presence of the present critical situa- 
tion of mankind has the right to oppose any constructive plan except 
by a better constructive plan. I will say now that I am ready to take 
ship again and carry back to Paris any constructive proposals which 
appear a suitable and better substitute for those which have been 
made. 

There is a peculiarity about this constructive plan which ought, I 
think, to facilitate our acceptance of it. It is laid out in every part 
upon American principles. Everybody knows that the principles of 
peace proposed by America were adopted, were adopted as the basis 
of the armistice and have been acted upon as the basis of the peace, 
and there is a circumstance about those American principles which 
gives me absolute confidence in them. They were not principles 
which I originated. They would have none of the strength in them 
that they have if they had been of individual origination. I remem- 
ber how anxiously I watched the movements of opinion in this coun- 
try during the months immediately preceding our entrance into the 
war. Again and again I put this question to the men who sat around 
the board at which the Cabinet meets. They represented different 
parts of the country, they were in touch with the opinion in different 

283 



284 ADDRESSES OE PRESIDENT WILSON. 

parts of the United States, and I would frequently say to them, 
" How do you think the people feel with regard to our relation to this 
war ? " And I remember, one day, one of them said, " Mr. President, 
I think that they are ready to do anything you suggest." I said, 
" That is not what I am waiting for. That is not enough. If they 
do not go in of their own impulse, no impulse that I can supply will 
suffice, and I must wait until I know that I am their spokesman. I 
must wait until I know that I am interpreting their purpose. Then 
I will know that I have got an irresistible power behind me." And 
that is exactly what happened. 

That is what is now appreciated as it was not at first appreciated 
on the other side of the sea. They wondered and wondered why we 
did not come in. They had come to the cynical conclusion that we 
did not come in because we were making money out of the war and 
did not want to spoil the profitable game ; and then at last they saw 
what we were waiting for, in order that the whole plot of the Ger- 
man purpose should develop, in order that we might see how the 
intrigue of that plot had penetrated our own life, how the poison 
was spreading, and how it was nothing less than a design against the 
freedom of the world. They knew that when America once saw 
that she would throw her power in with those who were going to 
redeem the world. And at every point of the discussion I was at- 
tempting to be the mouthpiece of what I understood right-thinking 
and forward- thinking and just-thinking men without regard to 
party or section in the United States to be purposing and conceiving, 
and it was the consciousness in Europe that that was the case that 
made it possible to construct the peace upon American principles. 
The American principles were not only accepted. They were acted 
upon, and when I came back to this country with that plan I think 
you will bear me out that the Nation was prepared to accept it. I 
have no doubt, and I have not met anybody who had any well- 
reasoned doubt, that if immediate action could have been secured 
upon the treaty at that time only a negligible percentage of our 
people would have objected to its acceptance, without a single 
change in either the wording or the punctuation. But then some- 
thing intervened, and, my fellow citizens, I am not only not going 
to try to analyze what that was, I am not going to allow my own 
judgment to be formed as regards what it was. I do not under- 
stand it, but there is a certain part of it that I do understand. It 
is to the immediate interest of Germany to separate us from our 
associates in the war, and I know that the opposition to the treat}- 
is most acceptable in those quarters of the country where pro-Ger- 
man sentiment was strongest. I know that all over the country Ger- 
man propaganda has lifted its hideous head again, and I hear the 
hiss of it on every side. 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 285 

When gentlemen speak of isolation, they forget we would have a 
companion. There would be another isolated nation, and that is Ger- 
many. They forget that we would be in the judgment of the world 
in the same class and at the same disadvantage as Germany. I mean 
sentimental disadvantage. We would be regarded as having with- 
drawn our cooperation from that concerted purpose of mankind 
which was recently conceived and exercised for the liberation of man- 
kind, and Germany ^ould be the only nation in the world to profit 
by it. I have no doubt there are scores of business men present. Do 
you think we would profit materially by isolating ourselves and cen- 
tering upon ourselves the hostility and suspicion and resistance of all 
the liberal minds in the world ? Do you think that if, after having 
Avon the absolute confidence of the world and excited the hope of the 
world, we would lead if we should turn away from them and say, 
" No ; we do not care to be associated with you any longer ; we are 
going to play a lone hand; we are going to play it for our single ad- 
vantage " ? Do you think after that there is a very good psychology 
for business, there is a very good psychology for credit? Do you 
think that throws foreign markets open to you? Do you remember 
what happened just before we went into the war? There was a 
conference in Paris, the object of which was to unite the peoples 
fighting against Germany in an economic combination which would 
be exclusively for their own benefit. It is possible now for those powers 
to organize and combine in respect of the purchase of raw materials, 
and if the foreign market for our raw materials is united, we will 
have to sell at the price that they are willing to pay or not sell at 
all. Unless you go into the great economic partnership with the 
world, you have the rest of the world economically combined against 
you. So that if you bring the thing down to this lowest of all bases, 
the bases of material self-interest, you lose in the game, and, for my 
part, I am free to say that you ought to lose. 

We are told that we are strong and they are weak; that we still 
have economic or financial independence and they have not. Why, 
my fellow citizens, what does that mean? That means that they 
went into the redemption of the freedom of the world sooner than 
we did and gave everything that they had to redeem it. And now we, 
because we did not go in so soon or lose so much, want to make profit 
of the redeemers ! The thing is hideous. The thing is unworthy of 
every tradition of America. I speak of it not because I think that 
sort of thing takes the least hold upon the consciousness or the pur- 
pose of America but because it is a pleasure to condemn so ugly a 
thing. 

When we look at the objections which these gentlemen make, I 
have found in going about the country that the result has been that 
in the greater part of the United States the people do not know 



286 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

what is in the treaty. To my great surprise. I have had to stand up 
and expound the treaty — tell the people what is in it — and I have 
had man after man say, " Why, we never dreamed that those things 
were in the treaty. We never heard anything about that.'' No ; you 
never heard anything about the greater part of the enterprise; you 
only heard about some of the alleged aspects of the method in which 
the enterprise was to be carried out. That is all you have heard 
about. I remember saying — and I believe it was the thought of 
America — that this was a people's war and the treaty must be a 
people's peace. That is exactly what this peace treaty proposes. For 
the first time in the histor}^ of civilized society, a great international 
convention, made up of the leading statesmen of the world, has pro- 
posed a settlement which is for the benefit of the weak and not for 
the benefit of the strong. It is for the benefit of peoples who could 
not have liberated themselves, whose weakness was profitable to the 
ambitious and imperialistic nations, whose weakness had been traded 
in by every cabinet in Europe; and yet these very cabinets repre- 
sented at the table in Paris were unanimous in the conviction that 
the people's day had come and that it was not their right to dispose 
of the fort mes of people without the consent of those people 
themselves. 

At the front of this great settlement they put the only thing that 
will preserve it. You can not set weak peoples up in independence 
and then leave them to be preyed upon. You can not give a false 
gift. You can not give to people rights which they never enjoyed 
before and say, " Now, keep them if you can." That is an Indian 
gift. That is a gift which can not be kept. If you have a really 
humane purpose and a real knowledge of the conditions of peace in 
the world, you will have to say, " This is the settlement and we guar- 
antee its continuance." There is only one honorable course when you 
have won a cause, to see that it stays won and nobody interferes with 
or disturbs the results. That is the purpose of the much-discussed 
article 10 in the covenant of the league of nations. It is the Monroe 
doctrine applied to the world. Ever since Mr. Monroe uttered his 
famous^ doctrine we have said to the world, " We will respect and 
preserve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and 
the political independence of every State in the Western Hemi- 
sphere," and those are practically the words of article 10. Under 
article 10 all the members of the league engage to respect and pre- 
serve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and ex- 
isting political independence of the other member States, and if that 
guaranty is not forthcoming the whole structure of peace will crum- 
ble, because you can not point out a great war that has not begun 
by a violation of that principle ; that has not begun by the intention 
to impair the territorial integrity or to interfere with the political 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 287 

independence of some body of people of some nation. It was the 
heart of the Pan-German plan. It is the heart of every imperialistic 
plan, because imperialism is the design to control the destinies of 
people who did not choose you to control them. It is the principle 
of domination. It is at the opposite extreme from the principle of 
self-determination and self-government, and in that same covenant 
of the league of nations is the provision that only self-governing 
States shall be admitted to the membership of the league. No in- 
fluence shall be injected there which is not sympathetic with the 
fundamental principle, namely, that ancient and noble principle that 
underlies our institutions, that all just government depends upon the 
consent of the governed. 

You have no choice, my fellow citizens, because the peoples of the 
w T orld, even those that slept, are awake. There is not a country in the 
world where the great mass of mankind is not now aware of its rights 
and determined to have them at any cost, and the present universal 
unrest in the world, which renders return to normal conditions impos- 
sible so long as it continues, will not stop until men are assured by 
some arrangement they can believe in that their rights Avill be pro- 
tected and that they can go about the normal production of the neces- 
saries of life and begin to enjoy the ordinary pleasures and privileges 
of life without the constant shadow of some cloud of terror over them, 
some threat of injustice, some tyranny of control. Men are not going' 
to stand it. If you want to quiet the world, you have got to reassure 
the world, and the only way in which you can reassure it is to let it 
know that all the great fighting powers of the world are going to 
maintain that quiet, that the fighting power is no longer to be directed 
toward aggression, but is to be directed toward protection. And every 
great fighting nation in the world will be in the league — because Ger- 
many for the time being is not a great fighting power. That great 
nation of over 60,000,000 people has consented in the treaty to reduce 
its standing armed force to 100,000 men and to give up all the war 
material over and above what is necessary to maintain an army of 
100,000 men; so that for the time being Ave may exclude Germany 
from the list of the fighting nations of the world. The whole power 
of the world is now offered to mankind for the maintenance of peace, 
and for the maintenance of peace by the very processes we have all 
professed to believe in, by substituting arbitration and discussion for 
war, by substituting the judgment of mankind for the force of arms. 
I say without qualification that every nation that is not afraid of the 
judgment of mankind will go into this arrangement. There is nothing 
for any nation to lose whose purposes are right and whose cause is 
just. The only nations that need fear to go into it are those that have 
designs which are illegitimate, those which have designs that are 
inconsistent with justice and are the opposite of pea^e. 



288 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

The whole freedom of the world not only, but the whole peace of 
mind of the world, depends upon the choice of America, because 
without America in this arrangement the world will not be reassured. 
I can testify to that. I can testify that no impression was borne in 
deeper upon me on the other side of the water than that no great 
free peoples suspected the United States of ulterior designs, and 
that every nation, the weakest among them, felt that its fortunes 
would be safe if intrusted to the guidance of America ; that America 
would not impose upon it. At the peace table one of the reasons 
why American advice constantly prevailed, as it did, was that our 
experts — our financial experts, our economic experts, and all the 
rest of us, for you must remember that the work of the conference 
was not done exclusively by the men whose names you all read about 
every day; it was done in the most intensive labor of experts of 
every sort who sat down together and got down to the hardpan 
of every subject that they had to deal with — were known to be dis- 
interested, and in nine cases out of ten, after a long series of debates 
and interchanges of views and counterproposals, it was usually the 
American proposal that was adopted. That was because the Ameri- 
can experts came at last into this position of advantage, they had 
convinced everybody that they were not trying to work anything, 
that they were not thinking of something that they did not dis- 
close, that they wanted all the cards on the table, and that they 
wanted to deal with nothing but facts. They were not dealing with 
national ambitions, they were not trying to disappoint anybody, 
and they were not trying to stack the cards for anybody. It was 
that conviction, and that only, which led to the success of American 
counsel in Paris. 

Is not that a worthy heritage for people who set up a great free 
Nation on this continent in order to lead men in the ways of justice 
and of liberty? My heart was filled with a profound pride when 
I realized how America was regarded, and my only fear was that we 
who were over there would not have wisdom enough to play the 
part. Delegations from literally all parts of the world came to 
seek interviews with me as the spokesman of America, and there 
was always a plea that America should lead; that America should 
suggest. I remember saying to one of the delegations, which seemed 
to me more childlike in its confidence than the rest, " I beg that you 
gentlemen will not expect the impossible. America will do every- 
thing that she can, but she can not do some of the things that you are 
expecting of her. My chief fear is to disappoint, because you are 
expecting what can not be realized." My fear was not that America 
would not prove true to herself, but that the things expected of her 
were so ideal that in this practical world, full of obstacles, it would 
be impossible to realize the expectation. There was in the back- 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 289 

ground the infinite gratification at the reputation and confidence 
that this country had won. 

The world is in that situation industrially, economically, politi- 
cally. The world will be absolutely in despair if America deserts it. 
But the thing is inconceivable. America is not going to desert it. 
The people of America are not going to desert it. The job is to 
get that into the consciousness of men who do not understand it. 
The job is to restore some of our fellow citizens to that large sort 
of sanity which makes a man bigger than himself. We have had 
a great many successful men in America, my fellow citizens, but we 
have seldom erected a statue to a man who was merely successful 
in a business way. Almost all the statues in America, almost all the 
memorials, are erected to men who forgot themselves and worked 
for other people. They may not have been rich, they may not have 
been successful in the worldly sense, they may have been deemed in 
their generation dreamers and idealists, but when they were dead 
America remembered that they loved mankind, America remembered 
that they embodied in those dreamy ideals of theirs the visions that 
America had had, America remembered that they had a great sur- 
plus of character that they spent not upon themselves but upon the 
enterprises of humanity. A man who has not got that surplus 
capital of character that he spends upon the great enterprises of 
communities and of nations will sink into a deserved oblivion, and 
the only danger is that in his concentration upon his own ambitions, 
in his centering of everything that he spends upon himself, he will 
lead others astray and work a disservice to great communities which 
he ought to have served. It is now an enterprise of infection ahead 
of us — shall I call it? We have got to infect those men with the 
spirit of the Nation itself. We have got to make them aware that 
we will not be led ; that we will not be controlled ; that we will not 
be restrained by those who are not like ourselves ; and that America 
now is in the presence of the realization of the destiny for which she 
has been waiting. 

You know, you have been told, that Washington advised us against 
entangling alliances, and gentlemen have used that as an argument 
against the league of nations. What Washington had in mind was 
exactly what these gentlemen want to lead us back to. The day we 
have left behind us was a day of alliances. It was a day of balances 
of power. It was a day of " every nation take care of itself or make 
a partnership with some other nation or group of nations to hold the 
peace of the world steady or to dominate the weaker portions of the 
world." Those were the days of alliances. This project of the 
league of nations is a great process of disentanglement. I was read- 
ing only this morning what a friend of mine reminded me of, a 

141677— S. Doc. 120, 66-1 19 



290 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON". 

speech that President McKinley made the day before he was assassi- 
nated, and in several passages of that speech you see the dawn of this 
expectation in his humane mind. His whole thought was against 
isolation. His whole thought was that we had by process of circum- 
stance, as well as of interest, become partners with the rest of the 
world. His thought was that the world had grown little by quick- 
ened methods of intercommunication. His whole thought was that 
the better we knew each other and the closer we drew together, the 
more certain it would be that the processes of arbitration would be 
adopted ; that men would not fight but would talk things over ; that 
they would realize their community of interest ; and shot all through 
that speech you see the morning light of just such a day as this. It 
would look as if the man had been given a vision just before he 
died — one of the sweetest and most humane souls that have been 
prominent in our affairs, a man who thought with his head and with 
his heart. This new day was dawning upon his heart, and his intel- 
ligence was beginning to draw the lines of the new picture which has 
been completed and sketched in a constructive document that we 
shall adopt and that, having adopted it, we shall find to reflect a 
new glory upon the things that we did. Then what significance will 
attach to the boy's sword or the boy's musket over the mantelpiece — 
not merely that he beat Germany, but that he redeemed the world. 



ADDRESS AT AUDITORIUM, LOS ANGELES, CALIF. 

SEPTEMBER 20, 1919. 



Mr. Mayor, Mrs. Bowles, my fellow countrymen, I esteem it a great 
privilege to stand before this audience, and I esteem it one of the most 
interesting occasions that I have had to expound a theme so great 
that I am always afraid that I am inadequate to its exposition. I 
esteem it a privilege to be in the presence that I find myself in, on 
the stage with this committee of gentlemen representing the nations 
with whom we have been associated in the war, with these men who 
saved the Union and with these men who saved the world. 

I feel that there is a certain sense in which I am rendering my 
account to the soldiers and sailors whose Commander in Chief I have 
been, for I sent them across the sea believing that their errand was 
not only to defeat Germany, but also to redeem the world from the 
danger to which Germany had exposed it, to make the world a place 
in which arbitration, discussion, the processes of peace, the processes 
of justice should supplant the brutal processes of war. I came back 
from the other side proud that I was bringing with me a document 
which contained a great constructive plan to accomplish that very 
thing. It is a matter of unaffected amazement on my part, my fellow 
citizens, that there should be men in high station who oppose its 
adoption. It is a matter of amazement that they should devote their 
scrutiny to certain details and forget the majesty of the plan, that 
they should actually have made it necessary that I should go through- 
out the country telling the people of the United States what is in the 
treaty of peace. For they have not told you. They have given you 
no conception of its scope. They have not expounded its objects. 
They have not shown you how it is a people's and not a statesmen's 
peace. They have not shown you how at its heart lies the liberation 
of nations. They have not shown you that in it is the redemption of 
our promise that we were fighting for the right of the weak and not 
for the power of the strong. These promises are redeemed in that 
great document, these hopes are realized, and the only buttress for 
that great structure is the league of nations. If that should fail, 
there is no guaranty that any part of the settlement will stand. If 
that should fail, nations will once more sink back into that slough of 
despond in which they formerly struggled, suspecting one another, 

291 



292 ADDKESSES OF PRESIDENT WILS03ST. 

rivaling one another in preparation for war, intriguing against one 
another, plotting against the weak in order to supplement the power 
of the strong. 

And they did more than that, because mankind is now aware that 
the rights of the greater portion of mankind have not been safe- 
guarded and regarded. Do not for a moment suppose that the 
universal unrest in the world at the present time, my fellow citizens, 
is due to any whim, to any newborn passion, to any newly discovered 
ambition. It is due to the fact, the sad, the tragic fact, that great 
bodies of men have throughout the ages been denied the mere rights 
of humanity. The peoples of the world are tired of a time with 
governments that exploit their people, and they are determined to 
have, by one process or another, that concerted order of conciliation 
and debate and conference which is set up in the great document 
that we know as the covenant of the league of nations. The heart of 
that document is not in the mere details that you have heard about. 
The heart of that document is that every great fighting nation in the 
world — for Germany at present is not a great fighting nation — 
solemnly engages that it will never resort to war without first having 
done one or other of two things, either submitted the matter in dis- 
pute to arbitration, in which case it agrees to abide by the verdict, or, 
if it does not choose to submit it to arbitration, submit it to the dis- 
cussion and examination of the council of the league of nations, be- 
fore whom it promises to lay all the documents, to whom it promises 
to disclose all the pertinent facts, by whom it agrees all the docu- 
ments and facts shall be published and laid before the opinion of the 
world. It agrees that six months shall be allowed for the examina- 
tion of those documents and facts by the council of the league and 
that, even if it is dissatisfied with the opinion finally uttered, it will 
still not resort to war until three months after the opinion has been 
rendered. All agree that there shall be nine months of deliberate 
discussion and frank weighing of the merits of the case before the 
whole jury of mankind before they will go to war. 

If any one of them disregards that promise and refuses to submit 
the question in dispute either to arbitration or to discussion, or goes 
to war within less than the nine months, then there is an automatic 
penalty that is applied, more effective, I take leave to say, than war 
itself, namely, the application of an absolute boycott. The nation 
that disregards that promise, we all agree, shall be isolated ; shall be 
denied the right to ship out goods or to ship them in, to exchange 
telegraphic messages or messages by mail, to have any dealings of any 
kind with the citizens of the other members of the league. First, the 
pressure of opinion and then the compelling pressure of economic 
necessity — those are the great bulwarks of peace. Do you say they are 



ADDRESSES OE PRESIDENT WILSON. 293 

not sufficient? I put this proposition to you: You want insurance 

against war. Wouldn't you rather have 10 per cent insurance than 
none? If you could get 20 per cent insurance, wouldn't you be de- 
lighted? If you got 50 per cent insurance, wouldn't you think it 
Utopian? Why, my fellow citizens, if you examine the provisions 
of this league of nations, I think you will agree with me that you 
have got 99 per cent insurance. That is what we promised the 
mothers and wives and sweethearts of these men that they should 
have — insurance against the terrible danger of losing those who were 
dear to them, slain upon the battle field because of the unhallowed 
plots of autocratic governments. Autocratic governments are ex- 
cluded henceforth from respectable society. It is provided in the 
covenant of the league of nations that only self-governing peoples 
shall be admitted to its membership, and the reason that Germany is 
for the time being excluded is that we want to wait and see whether 
she really has changed permanently her form of constitution and her 
habit of government. If she has changed her mind in reality, if her 
great people have taken charge of their own affairs and will prove it 
to us, they are entitled to come into respectable society and join the 
league of nations. Until then they are on probation, and to hear 
some of them talk now you would think the probation had to be 
rather long, because they do not seem to have repented of their es- 
sential purpose. 

Now, offset against this, my fellow citizens, some of the things 
that are being said about the covenant of the league and about the 
treaty. I want to begin with one of the central objections which are 
made to the treaty, for I have come here disposed to business. I do 
not want to indulge in generalities. I do not want to dwell more 
than it is proper to dwell upon the great ideal purposes that lie 
behind this peace and this covenant. I want to contrast some things 
that have been said with the real facts. There is nothing that is 
formidable in this world in public affairs except facts. Talk does 
not matter. As I was saying the other night, if you suspect any 
acquaintance of yours of being a fool, encourage him to hire a hall. 
Your fellow citizens will then know whether your judgment of him 
was right or wrong, and it will not be you that convinced them, it 
will be he who does the convincing. The best way to dissipate 
nonsense is to expose it to the open air. It is a volatile thing, whereas 
fact and truth are concrete things and you can not dissipate them 
that way. perhaps I may tell a rather trivial story. When I was 
governor of New Jersey I got rather reluctant support for a certain 
measure of reform that I was very much interested in from a par- 
ticular member of the senate of the State who, I think, if he had 
been left to his own devices, would probably have not voted for the 
measure, but to whom an influential committee of his fellow towns- 



294 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

men came and, so to say. personalty conducted his vote. After they 
had successfully conducted it in the way that they wished, they 
solemnly brought him into my office to be congratulated. It was a 
great strain upon my gravity, but I pulled as straight a face as I 
could and thanked him and congratulated him. Then, tipping a 
very heav}^ wink indeed, he said, "Governor, they never get me if I 
see them coming first." Now, I have adopted that as my motto with 
regard to facts. I never let them get me if I see them coming first. 
The danger for some of the gentlemen we are thinking about to- 
night, but not mentioning, is that the facts are coming and they do 
not see them. My prediction is that the facts are going to get them 
and make a very comfortable meal off of them. 

Let us take up some of these things, to grow serious again. In the 
first place, there is that very complex question of the cession of the 
rights which Germany formerly enjoyed in Shantung Province, in 
China, and which the treaty transfers to Japan. The only way in 
which to clear this matter up is to know what lies back of it. Let 
me recall some circumstances which probably most of you have 
forgotten. I have to go back to the year 1898, for it was in March 
of that year that these cessions which formerly belonged to Germany 
were transferred to her by the Government of China. What had 
happened was that two German missionaries in China had been 
murdered. The central Government at Peking had done everything 
that was in its power to do to quiet the local disturbances, to allay 
the local prejudice against foreigners which led to the murders, but 
had been unable to do so, and the German Government held them 
responsible, nevertheless, for the murder of the missionaries. It 
was not the missionaries that the German Government was inter- 
ested in. That was a pretext. Ah^my fellow citizens, how often 
we have made Christianity an excuse for wrong ! How often in the 
name of protecting what was sacred we have done what was tragic- 
ally wrong! That was what Germany did. She insisted that, be- 
cause this thing had happened for which the Peking Government 
could not really with justice be held responsible, a very large and 
important part of one of the richest Provinces of China should be 
ceded to her for sovereign control, for a period of 99 years, that she 
should have the right to penetrate the interior of that Province with 
a railway, and that she should have the right to exploit any ores 
that lay within 30 miles either side of that railway. She forced the 
Peking Government to say that they did it in gratitude to the 
German Government for certain services which she was supposed 
to have rendered but never did render. That was the beginning. I 
do not know whether any of the gentlemen who are criticizing the 
present Shantung settlement were in public affairs at that time or 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 295 

not, but I will tell you what happened, so far as this Government 
was concerned. 

One of the most enlightened and humane Presidents we have 
ever had was at the head of the Government — William McKinley, 
a man who loved his fellow men and believed in justice — and asso- 
ciated witii lnm was one of our ablest Secretaries of State — Mr. 
John Hay. The state of international law was such then that they 
did not feel at liberty to make even a protest against these conces- 
sions to Germany. Neither did they make any protest when, im- 
mediately following that, similar concessions were made to Russia, 
to Great Britain, and to France. It was almost immediately after 
that that China granted to Russia the right of the possession and 
control of Port Arthur and a portion of the region of Talien-Wan. 
Then England, not wishing to be outdone, although she had simi- 
lar rights elsewhere in China, insisted upon a similar concession 
and got Wei-Hai-Wai. Then France insisted that she must have 
a port, and got it for 99 years. Not against one of those did the 
Government of the United States make any protest whatever. They 
only insisted that the door should not be shut in any of these regions 
against the trade of the United States. You have heard of Mr. 
Hay's policy of the open door. That was his policy of the open 
door — not the open door to the rights of China, but the open door 
to the goods of America. I want you to understand, my fellow 
countrymen, I am not criticizing this because, until we adopt the 
covenant of the league of nations, it is an unfriendly act for any 
government to interfere in the affairs of any other unless its own 
interests are immediate^ concerned. The only thing Mr. McKinley 
and Mr. Hay were at liberty to do was to call attention to the fact 
that the trade of the United States might be unfavorably affected 
and insist that in no circumstances it should be. They got from all 
of these powers the promise that it should not be — a promise which 
was more or less kept. Following that came the war between Rus- 
sia and Japan, and at the close of that war Japan got Port Arthur 
and all the rights which Russia enjoyed in China, just as she is now 
getting Shantung and the rights her recently defeated enemy had 
in China — an exactly similar operation. That peace that gave her 
Port Arthur was concluded, as you know, on the territory of the 
United States — at Portsmouth, N. H. Nobody dreamed of protest- 
ing against that. Japan had beaten Russia. Port Arthur did not at 
that time belong to China; it belonged for the period of the lease 
to Russia, and Japan was ceded what Japan had taken by the well- 
recognized processes of war. 

Very well, at the opening of this war, Japan went and took Kiao- 
chow and supplanted Germany in Shantung Province. The whole 
process is repeated, but repeated with a new sanction. In the mean- 



296 ADDEESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

time, after this present war began, England and France, not at the 
same time, but successively, feeling that it was essential that they 
should have the assistance of Japan on the Pacific, agreed that if 
Japan would go into this war and take whatever Germany had in the 
Pacific she should retain everything north of the equator which had 
belonged to Germany. That treaty now stands. That treaty abso- 
lutely binds Great Britain and France. Great Britain and France 
can not in honor, having offered Japan this inducement to enter the 
war and to continue her operations, consent to an elimination of the 
Shantung provision from the present treaty. Very well, let us put 
these gentlemen who are objecting to the Shantung settlement to the 
test. Are they ready to fight Great Britain and France and Japan, 
who will have to stand together, in order to get this Province back for 
China? I know they are not, and their interest in China is not the 
interest of assisting China, but of defeating the treaty. They know 
beforehand that a modification of the treaty in that respect can not 
be obtained, and they are insisting upon what they know is im- 
possible ; but if they ratify the treaty and accept the covenant of the 
league of nations they do put themselves in a position to assist China. 
They put themselves in that position for the very first time in the his- 
tory of international engagements. They change the whole faith of 
international affairs, because after you have read the much debated 
article 10 of the covenant I advise you to read article 11. Article 11 
says that it shall be the friendly right of any member of the league to 
call attention at any time to anything, anywhere, that threatens to 
disturb the peace of the world or the good understanding between 
nations upon which the peace of the world depends. That in itself 
constitutes a revolution in international relationships. Anything that 
affects the peace of any part of the world is the business of every 
nation. It does not have simply to insist that its trade shall not be 
interfered with ; it has the right to insist that the rights of mankind 
shall not be interfered with. Not only that, but back of this provision 
with regard to Shantung lies, as everybody knows or ought to know, 
a very honorable promise which was made by the Government of 
Japan in my presence in Paris, namely, that just as soon as possible 
after the ratification of this treaty they will return to China all 
soverign rights in the Province of Shantung. Great Britain has not 
promised to return Weihaiwei ; France has not promised to return her 
part. Japan has promised to relinquish all the sovereign rights which 
were acquired by Germany for the remaining 78 of the 99 years of 
the lease, and to retain only what other Governments have in many 
other parts of China, namely, the right to build and operate the rail- 
way under a corporation and to exploit the mines in the immediate 
neighborhood of that railway. In other words, she retains only the 
rights of economic concessionaires. Personally, I am frank to say 



ADDRESSES OE PRESIDENT WILSON. 297 

that I think all of these nations have invaded some of the essential 
rights of China by going too far in the concessions which they have 
demanded, but that is an old story now, and we are beginning a new 
story. In the new story we all have the right to talk about what they 
have been doing and to convince them, by the pressure of the public 
opinion of the world, that a different course of action would be just 
and right. I am for helping China and not turning away from the 
only way in which I can help her. Those are the facts about Shantung. 
Doesn't the thing look a little different ? 

Another thing that is giving some of our fellow countrymen pangs 
of some sort — pangs of jealousy, perhaps — is that, as they put it, 
Great Britain has six votes in the league and we have only one. 
Well, our one vote, it happens, counts just as heavily as if every one 
of our States were represented and we had 48, because it happens, 
though these gentlemen have overlooked it, that the assembly is not 
an independent voting body. Great Britain has only one representa- 
tive and one vote in the council of the league of nations, which origi- 
nates all action, and its six votes are in the assembly, which is a de- 
bating and not an executive body. In every matter in which the 
assembly can vote along with the council it is necessary that all the 
nations represented on the council should concur in the affirmative 
vote to make it valid, so that in every vote, no matter how many 
concur in it in the assembly, in order for it to become valid, it is 
necessary that the United States should vote aye. 

Inasmuch as the assembly is a debating body, that is the place 
where this exposure that I have talked about to the open air is to 
occur. It would not be wise for anybody to go into the assembly 
with purposes that will not bear exposure, because that is the great 
cooling process of the world ; that is the great place where gases are 
to be burned off. I ask you, in debating the affairs of mankind, 
would it have been fair to give Panama a vote, as she will have, 
Cuba a vote, both of them very much under the influence of the United 
States, and not give a vote to the Dominion of Canada, to that great 
energetic Republic in South Africa, to that place from which so many 
Hberal ideas and liberal actions have come, that stout little Com- 
monwealth of Australia ? When I was in Paris the men I could not 
tell apart, except by their hats, were the Americans and the Aus- 
tralians. They both had the swing of fellows who say, "The gang is 
all here, what do we care?" Could we deny a vote to that other 
little self-governing nation, for it practically is such in everything 
but its foreign affairs, New Zealand, or to those toiling — I was about 
to say uncounted — millions in India? Would you want to deprive 
these great communities of a voice in the debate? My fellow 
citizens, it is a proposition which has never been stated, because to 
state it answers it. But they can not outvote us. If we, as I said 



I 



298 ADDKESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

a minute ago, had 48 votes in the assembly, they would not count 
any more than our 1, because they would have to be combined, and 
it is easier to combine 1 than to combine 48. The vote of the 
United States is potential to prevent anything that the United States 
does not care to approve. All this nonsense about six votes and 
one vote can be dismissed and you can sleep with perfect quiet. In 
order that I may not be said to have misled you, I must say that 
there is one matter upon which the assembly can vote, and which it 
can decide by a two-thirds majority without the concurrence of all 
the States represented in the council, and that is the admission of 
new members to the league. 

Then, there is that passion that some gentlemen have conceived, 
that we should never live with anybody else. You can call it the 
policy of isolation or the policy of taking care of yourself, or you 
can give any name you choose to what is thoroughly impossible and 
selfish. I say it is impossible, my fellow citizens. When men tell 
you that we are, by going into the league of nations, reversing the 
policy of the United States, they have not thought the thing out. 
The statement is not true. The facts of the world have changed. It 
is impossible for the United States to be isolated. It is impossible 
for the United States to play a lone hand, because it has gone part- 
ners with all the rest of the world with regard to every great interest 
that it is connected with. What are you going to do ? Give up your 
foreign markets? Give up your influence in the affairs of other 
nations and arm yourselves to the teeth and double your taxes and be 
ready to spring instead of ready to cooperate ? We are tied into the 
rest of the world by kinship, by sympathy, by interest in every great 
enterprise of human affairs. The United States has become the eco- 
nomic center of the world, the financial center. Our economic en- 
gagements run everywhere, into every part of the globe. Our as- 
sistance is essential to the establishment of normal conditions 
throughout the world. Our advice is constantly sought. Our 
standards of labor are being extended to all parts of the world just 
so fast as the}^ can be extended. America is the breeding center for 
all the ideas that are now going to fecundate the great future. You 
can no more separate yourselves from the rest of the world than you 
can take all the tender roots of a great tree out of the earth and 
expect the tree to live. All the tendrils of our life, economic and 
social and every other, are interlaced in a way that is inextricable 
with the similar tendrils of the rest of mankind. The only question 
which these gentlemen can ask us to decide is this : Shall we exercise 
our influence in the world, which can henceforth be a profound and 
controlling influence, at a great advantage or at an insuperable dis- 
advantage? That is the only question that you can ask. As I put 
it the other night, you have got this choice: You have got to be 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 299 

either provincials, little Americans, or big Americans, statesmen. 
You have got to be either ostriches with your heads in the sand or 
eagles. I doubt if the comparison, with the head in the sands, is a 
good one, because I think even an ostrich can think in the sand. 
What he does not know is that people are looking at the rest of him. 
Our choice is in the bird kingdom, and I have in my mind's eye a fu- 
ture in which it will seem that the eagle has been misused. You know 
that it was a double-headed eagle that represented the power of 
Austria-Hungary, you have heard of the eagles of Germany, but the 
only proper symbol of the eagle is the symbol for which we use it — as 
the bird of liberty and justice and peace. 

I want to put it as a business proposition, if I am obliged to come 
down as low as that, for I do not like in debating the great traditions 
of a free people to bring the debate down to the basis of dollars and 
cents; but if you want to bring it down to that, if anybody wants 
to bring it down to that, reason it out on that line. Is it easier to 
trade with a man who suspects and dislikes you or with one who 
trusts you ? Is it easier to deal with a man with a grouch or with a 
man who opens his mind and his opportunities to you and treats you 
like a partner and a friend? There is nothing which can more cer- 
tainly put a drop of acid into every relationship we have in the 
world than if we now desert our former associates in this war. That 
is exactly what we should be doing if we rejected this treaty, and 
that is exactly what, speaking unwisely and too soon, the German 
leaders have apprised us that they want us to do. No part of the 
world has been so pleased by our present hesitation as the leaders of 
Germany, because their hope from the first has been that sooner or 
later we would fall out with our associates. Their hope was to 
divide us before the fighting stopped, and now their hope is to divide 
us after the fighting. You read how a former German privy coun- 
cillor, I believe he was, said in an interview the other day that these 
debates in the Senate looked to him like the dawn of a new day. A 
new day for the world ? No ; a new day for the hopes of Germany, 
because he saw what anybody can see who lifts his eyes and looks 
in the future — two isolated nations; one isolated nation on proba- 
tion, and then two, the other a nation infinitely trusted, infinitely 
believed in, that had given magnificent purpose of its mettle and 
of its trustworthiness, now drawing selfishly and suspiciously apart 
and saying, " You may deceive us, you may draw us into broils, you 
may get us into trouble ; we will take care of ourselves, we will trade 
with you and we will trade on you." The thing is inconceivable. 
America is no quitter, and least of all is she a quitter in a great 
moral enterprise where her conscience is involved. The only im- 
mortal thing about America is her conscience. America is not going 
to be immortal because she has immense wealth. Other great nntions 



300 ADDRESSES OE PRESIDENT WILSON. 

had immense wealth and went down in decay and disgrace, because 
they had nothing else. America is great because of the ideas she has 
conceived. America is great because of the purposes she has set 
herself to achieve. America is great because she has seen visions 
that other nations have not seen, and the one enterprise that does 
engage the steadfast loyalty and support of the United States is an 
enterprise for the liberty of mankind. 

How can we make the purpose evident? I was saying in one 
place to-night that my dear father had once taught me that there was 
no use trying to reason out of a man what reason did not put in him, 
and yet here to-night I am trying to apply the remedy of reason. 
We must look about and find some other remedy, because in matters 
of this sort remedies are always homeopathic — like must cure like. 
Men must be made to see the great impulses of the Nation in such a 
fashion that they will not dare to resist t'hem. I do not mean by any 
threat of political disaster. Why, my fellow citizens, may I indulge 
in a confidence? I have had men politically disposed say to me, as 
a Democrat, " This is all to the good. These leaders of the Repub- 
lican Party in Washington are going to ruin the party." They seem 
to think that I will be pleased. I do not want to see the great Re- 
publican Party misrepresented and misled. I do not want to see any 
advantage reaped by the party I am a member of because another 
great party has been misrepresented, because I believe in the loyalty 
and Americanism and high ideals of my fellow citizens who are Re- 
publicans just as much as I believe in those things in Democrats. 
It seems almost absurd to say that ; of course I do. When we get to 
the borders of the United States we are neither Republicans nor 
Democrats. It is our privilege to scrap inside the family just as 
much as we please, but it is our duty as a Nation in those great 
matters of international concern which distinguish us to subordinate 
all such differences and to be a united family and all speak with one 
voice what we all know to be the high conceptions of American man- 
hood and womanhood. 

There is a tender side to this great subject. Have these gentle- 
men no hearts? Do they forget the sons that are dead in France? 
Do they forget the great sacrifice that this Nation has made? My 
friends, we did not go to France to fight for anything special for 
America. We did not send men 3,000 miles away to defend our own 
territory. We did not take up the gage that Germany had thrown 
down to us because America was being specially injured. America 
was not being specially injured. We sent those men over there be- 
cause free people everywhere were in danger and we had always 
been, and will always be, the champion of right and of liberty. 
That is the glory of these men that sit here. The hardest thing that 
I had to do, and the hardest thing that a lot of you had to do, was 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 301 

to continue to wear civilian clothes during the war, not to don a 
uniform, not to risk something besides reputation — risk life and 
everything. We knew that an altar had been erected upon which 
that sacrifice could be made more gloriously than upon any other 
altar that had ever been lifted among mankind, and we desired to 
offer ourselves as a sacrifice for humanity. And that is what we 
shall do, my fellow citizens. All the mists will pass away. A num- 
ber of halls are being hired. All the gases are being burned off; 
and when you come down, as the gases have passed away, to the 
solid metal of which this Nation is made, it will shine as lustrously 
and bright as it has ever shone throughout the history of the Nation 
we love and the Nation we will always consecrate ourselves to 
redeem. 



ADDRESS FROM REAR PLATFORM, SACRAMENTO, CALIF. 

SEPTEMBER 22, 1919. 



My fellow countrymen, it is impossible in these circumstances 
for me to attempt a speech, but I can not let the occasion go by with- 
out telling you how strong it makes my heart that you should have 
given me so extraordinary and delightful a welcome as this. It is 
the more delightful to me because I believe that it is not only a desire 
to welcome me, but a desire to show your interest and your support 
of the great cause I have come out to advocate. The happy circum- 
stance of this journey is that I have not come out to advocate any- 
thing personal to myself; that I have not come out to seek the for- 
tunes of any man or group of men, but to seek the safety and guaran- 
teed peace of mankind. We undertook a great war for a definite pur- 
pose. That definite purpose is carried out in a great treaty. I have 
brought the treaty back, and we must not much longer hesitate to 
ratify it, because that treaty is the guaranty of peace; it is the 
guaranty of permanent peace, for all the great fighting nations of the 
world are combined in it to maintain a just settlement. Without 
this treaty, without the covenent of the league of nations which it 
contains, we would simply sink back into that slough of despond in 
which mankind was before this war began, with the threat of war 
and of terror constantly over them. We can not go back. We will 
not go back. 

It is more than a guaranty of peace. It is a guaranty of justice. 
For example, it affords the only hope that China can get of the 
restoration to herself not only of the sovereignty of Shantung, but of 
the sovereignty which other nations as well have taken away from 
her. It affords the only expectation in similar cases elsewhere, that 
by the pressure, the terrible, irresistible pressure of public opinion 
throughout the world, ancient wrongs will be righted and men will 
get the chance to live that they never had before. It is the first com- 
bination of the power of the world to see that justice shall reign 
everywhere. We can not turn away from such an arrangement, and 
I am sure, my fellow citizens, not only from this great outpouring 
here, but from the great outpourings I have seen everywhere in this 
country, that the heart of America is right and her purpose is irre- 
sistible. 

303 



ADDRESS FROM REAR OF PLATFORM AT OGDEN, UTAH. 

SEPTEMBER 23, 1919. 



I can not make a real speech in the circumstances, but it would be 
ungracious of me if I did not say how delightful I have felt the wel- 
come of Ogden to be and how refreshing it is to me to come into 
contact with you, my fellow citizens, in this part of the world which 
I wish I knew much better. You will understand that the theme that 
I have most at heart needs a lot of sea room to turn in, and I would 
despair of making any adequate remarks about so great a matter as 
the treaty of peace or the league of nations; but I do find this, my 
fellow countrymen, that the thing is very near the heart of the people. 
There are some men in public life who do not seem to be in touch with 
the heart of the people, but those who are know how that heart 
throbs deep, and strong for this great enterprise of humanity, for 
it is nothing less than that. We must set our purposes in a very 
definite way to assist the judgment of public men. I do not mean in 
any way to coerce the judgment of public men, but to enlighten and 
assist that judgment, for I am convinced, after crossing the conti- 
nent, that there is no sort of doubt that 80 per cent of the people of 
the United States are for the league of nations, and that the chief 
opposition outside legislative halls comes from the very disquieting 
element that we had to deal with before and during the war. All 
the elements that tended toward disloyalty are against the league, 
and for a very good reason. If this league is not adopted we will 
serve Germany's purpose, because we will be dissociated from the 
nations, and I am afraid permanently dissociated from the nations 
with whom we cooperated in defeating Germany. Nothing is so 
gratifying, we now learn by cable, to public opinion in Germany as 
the possibility of their doing now what they could not do by arms, 
separating us in feeling when they could not separate us in fact. I 
for my part am in to see this thing through, because these men who 
fought the battles on the fields of France are not now going to be 
betrayed by the rest of us ; we are going to see that the thing they 
fought for is accomplished, and it does not make any difference how 
long the fight or how difficult the fight, it is going to be won, and 
triumphantly won. 

141677— S. Doc. 120. 66-1- 20 305 



ADDRESS AT RENO, NEV., 
SEPTEMBER 22, 1919. 



Gov. Boyle, Mr. Chairman, my fellow countrymen, the govei:nor 
and your chairman have both alluded to the fact that it does not 
often happen that the President comes to Nevada. Speaking for this 
President, I can say that it was not because he did not want to come 
to Nevada more than once, because from the first, when I have 
studied the movements of the history of this great country, nothing 
has fascinated me so much or seemed so characteristic of that history 
as the movement to the frontier, the constant spirit of adventure, 
the constant action forward. A wit in the East recently said, ex- 
plaining the fact that we were able to train a great army so rapidly, 
that it was so much easier to train an American army than any other 
because you had to train them to go only one way. That has been 
true of America and of the movement of population. It has always 
been one way. They have never been returning tides. They have 
always been advancing tides, and at the front of the advancing tide 
have always been the most adventurous spirits, the most originative 
spirits, the men who were ready to go anywhere and to take up any 
fortune to advance the things that they believed in and desired. 
Therefore, it is with a sense of exhilaration that I find myself in this 
community, which your governor has described as still a frontier 
community. You are a characteristic part of this great country 
which we all love. 

And it is the more delightful to look at your individual aspect, 
because the subject that I have come to speak about is a forward- 
looking subject. Some of the critics of the league of nations have 
their eyes over their shoulders ; they are looking backward. I think 
that is the reason they are stumbling all the time; they are always 
striking their feet against obstacles which everybody sees and avoids 
and which do not lie in the real path of the progress of civilization. 
Their power to divert, or to pervert, the view of this whole thing 
has made it necessary for me repeatedly on this journey to take the 
liberty that I am going to take with you to-night, of telling you just 
what kind of a treaty this is. Very few of them have been at pains 
to do that. Very few of them have given their audiences or the 
country at large any conception of what this great document contains 

307 



308 ADDKESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON". 

or of what its origin and purpose are. Therefore, I want, if you will 
be patient with me, to set the stage for the treaty, to let you see just 
what it was that was meant to be accomplished and just what it was 
that was accomplished. 

Perhaps I can illustrate best by recalling some history. Some- 
thing over a hundred years ago the last so-called peace conference 
sat in Vienna — back in the far year 1815, if I remember correctly. 
It was made up, as the recent conference in Paris was, of the leading 
statesmen of Europe. America was not then drawn into that gen- 
eral family and was not represented at that conference, and practi- 
cally every Government represented at Vienna at that time, except 
the Government of Great Britain, was a Government like the recent 
Government of Germany, where a small coterie of autocrats were 
able to determine the fortunes of their people without consulting 
them, were able to use their people as puppets and pawns in the game 
of ambition which was being played all over the stage of Europe. 
But just before that conference there had been many signs that there 
was a breaking up of that old order, there had been some very 
ominous signs, indeed. It was not then so long ago that, though 
there were but 3.000,000 people subject to the Crown of Great 
Britain in America, they had thrown off allegiance to that Crown 
successfully and defied the power of the British Empire on the 
ground that nobody at a distance had a right to govern them and 
that nobody had a right to govern them whom they did not choose 
to be their government; founding their government upon the prin- 
ciple that all just government rests upon the consent of the gov- 
erned. And there had followed, as you remember, that whirlwind of 
passion that we know as the French Revolution, when all the founda- 
tions of French government not only, but of French society, had 
been shaken and disturbed — a great rebellion of a great suffering 
population against an intolerable authority that had laid all the 
taxes on the poor and none of them on the rich, that had used the 
people as servants, that had made the boys and men of France play 
upon the battle field as if they were chessmen upon a board. France 
revolted and then the spirit spread, and the conference of Vienna 
was intended to check the revolutionary spirit of the time. Those 
men met in order to concert methods by which they could make 
inonarchs and monarchies safe, not only in Europe but throughout 
the world. 

The British representatives at that conference were alarmed be- 
cause they heard it whispered that European governments, Euro- 
pean monarchies, particularly those of the center of Europe, those 
of Austria and Germany — for Austria was then stronger than Ger- 
many — were purposing to extend their power to the Western Hem- 
isphere, to the Americas, and the prime minister of Great Britain 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 309 

suggested to Mr. Rush, the minister of the United States at the 
Court of Great Britain, that he put it in the ear of Mr. Monroe, who 
was then President, that this thing was afoot and it might be prof- 
itable to say something about it. Thereupon,- Mr. Monroe uttered 
his famous Monroe doctrine, saying that any European power that 
sought either to colonize this Western Hemisphere or to interfere 
Avith its political institutions, or to extend monarchical institutions 
to it, would be regarded as having done an unfriendly act to the 
United States, and since then no power has dared interfere with the 
self-determination of the Americas. That is the famous Monroe 
doctrine. We love it, because it was the first effective clam built up 
against the tide of autocractic power. The men who constituted the 
congress of Vienna, while they thought they were building of ada- 
mant, were building of cardboard. What they threw up looked like 
battlements, but presently were blown down by the very breath of 
insurgent people, for all over Europe during the middle of the last 
century there spread, spread irresistibly, the spirit of revolution. 
Government after government was changed in its character; people 
said, " It is not only in America that men want to govern themselves, 
it is not only in France that men mean to throw off this intolerable 
yoke. All men are of the same temper and of the same make and 
same rights." So the time of revolution could not be stopped by 
the conclusions of the Congress of Vienna; until it came about, my 
fellow citizens, that there was only one stronghold left for that 
sort of power, and that was at Berlin. In the year 1914 that power 
sought to make reconquest of Europe and the world. It was noth- 
ing less than the reassertion of that old, ugly thing which the hearts 
of men everywhere always revolt against, the claim of a few men to 
determine the fortunes of all men, the ambition of little groups of 
rulers to dominate the world, the plots and intrigues of military 
staffs and men who did not confide in their fellow citizens what it 
was that was their ultimate purpose. So the fire burned in Europe, 
until it spread and spread like a great forest conflagration, and 
every free nation was at last aroused ; saw the danger, saw the fear- 
ful sparks blowing over, carried by the winds of passion and likely 
to lodge in their own dear countries and destroy their own fair 
homes ; and at last the chief champion and spokesman of liberty, be- 
loved America, got into the war, and said, " We see the dark plot 
now. We promised at our birth to be the champions of humanity 
and we have never made a promise yet that we will not redeem." 
I know how the tides of war were going when our men began to get 
over there in force, and I think it is nothing less than true to say 
that America saved the world. 

Then a new congress of peace met to complete the work that the 
congress of Vienna tried to stop and resist. At the very front of this 



310 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

treaty of peace, my fellow citizens, is the covenant of the league of 
nations, and at the heart of that lies this principle, that no nation 
shall be a member of that league which is not a self-governing and 
free nation ; that no autocratic power may have any part in the part- 
nership ; that no power like Germany — such as Germany was — shall 
ever take part in its counsels. Germany has changed her consti- 
tution, as you know — has made it a democratic constitution, at any 
rate in form — and she is excluded for the time being from the league 
of nations only in order that she may go through a period of pro- 
bation to show that she means what she professes; to demonstrate 
that she actually does intend permanently to alter the character of 
her constitution and put into the hands of her people what was 
once concentrated as authority in Wilhelmstrasse in Berlin. If she 
can prove her change of heart and the permanency of her change 
of institutions, then she can come into respectable society; but if 
she can not, she is excluded forever. At last the cycle is completed, 
and the free peoples who were resisted at Vienna have come into 
their own. There was not a single statesman at Paris who did not 
know that he was the servant, and not the master, of his people. 
There was not one of them who did not know that the whole spirit 
of the times had changed and that they were there to see that people 
were liberated, not dominated ; that people were put in charge of 
their own territories and their own affairs. The chief business of 
the congress was to carry out that great purpose, and at last, in the 
covenant of the league of nations, the Monroe doctrine became the 
doctrine of the world. Not only may no European power impair the 
territorial integrity or interfere with the political independence of 
any State in the Americas but no power anywhere may impair the 
territorial integrity or invade the political independence of another 
power. The principle that Mr. Canning suggested to Mr. Monroe 
has now been vindicated by its adoption by the representatives of 
mankind. 

When I hear gentlemen ask the question, " Is the Monroe doctrine 
sufficiently safeguarded in the covenant of the league of nations? " 
I can only say that it is, if I understand the English language. It 
says in plain English that nothing in that covenant shall be inter- 
preted as affecting the validity of the Monroe doctrine. Could any- 
thing be plainer than that? And when you add to that that the 
principle of the Monroe doctrine is applied to the whole world, then 
surely I am at liberty to say that the heart of the document is the 
Monroe doctrine itself. We have at last vindicated the policy of 
America, because all through that treaty, and you will presently see 
all through the Austrian treaty, all through the Bulgarian treaty, all 
through the Turkish treaty, all through the separate treaty we must 
make with Hungary, because she is separated from Austria, runs the 



ADDKESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 311 

same principle, not only that no Government can impose its sover- 
eignty on unwilling people, but that Governments which have im- 
posed their sovereignty upon unwilling people must withdraw it. 
All the regions that were unwillingly subject to Germany, subject to 
Austria-Hungary, and subject to Turkey are now released from that 
sovereignty, and the principle is everywhere adopted that terri- 
tories belong to the people that live on them, and that they can set up 
any sort of government they please, and that nobody dare interfere 
with their self-determination and automony. I conceive this to be 
the greatest charter — nay, it is the first charter — ever adopted of 
human liberty. It sets the world free everywhere from autocracy, 
from imposed authority, from authority not chosen and accepted by 
the people who obey it. 

By the same token it removes the grounds of ambition. My fel- 
low citizens, we never undertake anything that we do not see through. 
This treaty was not written, essentially speaking, at Paris. It was 
written at Chateau-Thierry and in Belleau Wood and in the Argonne. 
Our men did not fight over there for the purpose of coming back 
and letting the same thing happen again. They did not come back 
with any fear in their heart that their public men would go back on 
them and not see the thing through. They went over there ex- 
pecting that the business would be finished, and it shall be finished. 
Nothing of that sort shall happen again, because America is going 
to see it through, and what she is going to see through is this, what 
is contained in article 10 of the covenant of the league. Article 10 is 
the heart of the enterprise. Article 10 is the test of the honor and 
courage and endurance of the world. Article 10 says that every 
member of the league, and that means every great fighting power in 
the world, Germany for the time being not being a great fighting 
power, solemnly engages to respect and preserve as against external 
aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independ- 
ence of the other members of the league. If you do that, you have 
absolutely stopped ambitious and aggressive war. There is one 
thing you have not stopped, and that I for my part do not desire to 
stop, and I think I am authorized to speak for a great many of my 
colleagues, if not all of my colleagues at Paris, that they do not wish 
to stop it. It does not stop the right of revolution. It does not stop 
the choice of self-determination. No nation promises to protect any 
Government against the wishes and actions of its own people or of 
any portion of its own people. Why, how could America join in a 
promise like that? She threw off the yoke of a Government. Shall 
we prevent any other people from throwing off the yoke that they 
are unwilling to bear? She never will, and no other Government 
ever will, under this covenant. But as against external aggression, 
as against ambition, as against the desire to dominate from without, 



312 ADDKESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

we all stand together in a common pledge, and that pledge is essen- 
tial to the peace of the world. 

I said that our people were trained to go only one way, that our 
soldiers were trained to go only one way, and that America will never 
turn about upon the path of emancipation upon which she has set out. 
Not once, but several times, German orders were picked up, or dis- 
covered during the fighting, the purport of which was to certain 
commanders, " Do not let the Americans capture such and such a post, 
because if they ever get there you can never get them out." They 
had got other troops out, temporarily at any rate, but they could not 
get the Americans out. The Americans were under the impression 
that they had come there to stay, and I am under that impression' 
about American political purposes. I am under the impression that 
we have come to the place where we have got in order to stay, and 
that some gentlemen are going to find that no matter how anxious 
they are to know that the door is open and that they can get out any 
time they want to they they will be allowed to get out by themselves. 
We are going to stay in. We are going to see this thing finished, 
because, my fellow citizens, that is the only possibility of peace ; and 
the world not only desires peace but it must have it. Are our affairs 
entirely in order ? Isn't the rest of the world aflame ? Have you any 
conception of the recklessness, of the insubordinate recklessness, of 
the great population of Europe and of great portions of Asia? Do 
you suppose that these people are going to resume any sort of nor- 
mal life unless their rulers can give them adequate and ample guar- 
anty of the future ? And do you realize — I wonder if America does 
realize — that the rest of the world deems America indispensable to 
the guaranty? For a reason of which we ought to be very proud. 
They see that America has no designs on any other country in the 
world. They keep in mind — they keep in mind more than you 
realize — what happened at the end of the Spanish- American War. 
There were many cynical smiles on the other side of the water when 
we said that we were going to liberate Cuba and then let her have 
charge of her own affairs. They said, "Ah, that is a very common 
subterfuge. Just watch. America is not going to let that rich 
island, with its great sugar plantations and its undeveloped agricul- 
tural wealth, get out of its grip again." And all Europe stood at 
amaze when, without delay or hesitation, we redeemed our promise 
and gave Cuba the liberty we had won for her. They know that we 
have not imperialistic purposes. 

They know that we do not desire to profit at the expense of other 
peoples. And they know our power, they know our wealth, they 
know our indomitable spirit ; and when we put our names to the bond 
then Europe will begin to be quiet, then men will begin to seek the 
peaceful solutions of days of normal industry and normal life, then 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 313 

men will take hope again, then men will cease to think of the revo- 
lutionary things they can do and begin to think of the constructive 
things they can do, will realize that disorder profits nobody and 
that order can at last be had upon terms of liberty and peace 
and justice. Then the reaction will come on our own people, because, 
do you think, my fellow citizens, does an} T body of Americans think, 
that none of this restlessness, this unhappy feeling, has reached 
America ? Do you find everybody about you content with our present 
industrial order? Do you hear no intimations of radical change? 
Do you learn of no organizations the object of which is nothing less 
than to overturn the Government itself? We are a self-possessed 
Nation. We know the value of order. We mean to maintain it. 
We will not permit any minority of any sort to dominate it. But it 
is rather important for America as well as for the rest of the world, 
that this infection should not be everywhere in the air, and that men 
everywhere should begin to look life and its facts in the face and 
come to calm counsels and purposes that will bring order and happi- 
ness and prosperity again. If you could see the stopped, the arrested 
factories over there, the untilled fields, the restless crowds in the 
cities with nothing to do, some of them, you would realize that they 
are waiting for something. They are waiting for peace, and not only 
for peace but for the assurance that peace will last, and they can 
not get that assurance if America withholds her might and her 
power and all the freshness of her strength from the assurance. 
There is a deep sense in which what your chairman said just now 
is profoundly true. We are the hope of humanity, and I for one 
have not the slightest doubt that we shall fulfill that hope. 

Yet, in order to reassure you about some of the things about which 
you have been diligently misinformed, I want to speak of one or two 
details. I have set the stage now, and I have not half described the 
treaty. It not only fulfills the hopes of mankind by giving territories 
to the people that belong to them and assuring them that nobod} T 
shall take it from them, but it goes into many details. It rearranges, 
for example, the great waterways of Europe, so that no one nation 
can control them, so that the currents of European life through the 
currents of its commerce may run free and unhampered and undomi- 
nated. It embodies a great charter for labor by setting up a perma- 
nent international organization in connection with the league of 
nations which shall periodically bring the best counsels of the world 
to bear upon the problem of raising the levels and conditions of 
labor for men, women, and children. It goes further than that. We 
did not give Germany back her colonies, but we did not give them to 
anybody else. We put them in trust in the league of nations, said 
that we would assign their government to certain powers by assign- 
ing the powers as trustees, responsible to the league, making annual 



314 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON". 

report to the league and holding the power under mandates which 
prescribe the methods by which they should administer those terri- 
tories for the benefit of the people living in them, whether they were 
developed or undeveloped people. We have put the same safeguards, 
and as adequate safeguards, around the poor, naked fellows in the 
jungles of Africa that we have around those peoples almost ready 
to assume the rights of self-government in some parts of the Turkish 
Empire, as, for example, in Armenia. It is a great charter of liberty 
and of safety, but let me come to one or two details. 

It sticks in the craw of a great many persons that in the constitu- 
tion of the league of nations, as it is said, Great Britain has been 
given six votes and the United States only one. That would be very 
interesting if true, but it does not happen to be true ; that is to say, it 
is not true in this sense, that the one American vote counts as much as 
the British six. In the first place, they have not got six votes in the 
council of the league, which is the only body that originates action, 
but in the assembly of the league, which is the debating and not the 
voting body. Every time the assembly participates in any active 
resolution of the league that resolution must be concurred in by all the 
nations represented on the council, which makes the affirmative vote 
of the United States in every instance necessary. The six votes of 
the British Empire can not do anything to which the United States 
does not consent. Now — I am mistaken — there is one thing they can 
do. By a two-thirds vote they can admit new members to the league, 
but I do not think that is a formidable privilege since almost every- 
body is going to be in the league to begin with, and since the only 
large power that is not in the league enjoys, if I may use that word, a 
universal prejudice against it, which makes its early admission, at 
least, unlikely. But aside from admission of any members, which re- 
quires a two thirds vote — in which the six British votes will not count 
a very large figure — every affirmative vote that leads to action re- 
quires the assent of the United States, and, as I have frequently said, 
I think it is very much more important to be one and count six than 
to be six and count six. So much for this bugaboo, for it is nothing 
else but a bugaboo. Bugaboos have been very much in fashion in the 
debates of those who have been opposing this league. The whole 
energy of that body is in the council of the league, for whose every 
action in the way of formulating policy or directing energetic meas- 
ures a unanimous vote is necessary. That may sometimes, I am 
afraid, impede the action of the league; but, at any rate, it makes the 
sovereignty and the soverign choice of every nation that is a member 
of that league absolutely safe. And pray do not deceive yourselves. 
The United States is not the only Government that is jealous of its 
sovereignty. Every other Government, big or little or middle sized, 
and that had to be dealt with in Paris, was just as jealous of its 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 315 

sovereignty as the United States. The only difference between some 
of them and us is that we could take of our sovereignty and they 
could not take care of theirs, but it has been a matter of principle 
with the United States to maintain that in respect of rights there was 
and should be no difference between a weak State and a strong St ate. 
Our contention has always been, in international affairs, that we 
should deal with them upon the principle of the absolute equality of 
independent sovereignty, and that is the basis of the organization of 
the league. Human society has not moved fast enough yet or far 
enough yet, my fellow citizens, for any part of that principle of 
sovereignty to be relinquished, by any one of the chief participants 
at any rate. 

Then there is another matter, that lies outside the league of 
nations, that I find my fellow citizens, in this part of the continent 
particularly, are deeply interested in. That is the matter of the 
cession of certain German rights in Shantung Province in China to 
Japan. I think that it is worth while to make that matter pretty 
clear, and I will have to ask you to be patient while I make a brief 
historical review in order to make it clear. In the first place, re- 
member that it does not take anything from China, it takes it from 
Germany, and I do not find that there is any very great jealously 
about taking things from Germany. In 1898 China granted to Ger- 
many for a period of 99 years certain very important rights around 
Kiaochow Bay, in the rich and ancient Province of Shantung, to- 
gether with the right to penetrate the interior with a railway and 
exploit such ores as might be found in that Province for 30 miles on 
either side of the railway. We are thinking so much about that con- 
cession to Germany that we have forgotten that practically all of the 
great European powers had exacted similar concessions of China pre- 
viously; they already had their foothold of control in China; they 
already had their control of railways; they already had their ex- 
clusive concessions over mines. Germany was doing an outrageous 
thing, I take the liberty of saying, as the others had done outrageous 
things, but it was not the first; at least, it had been done before. 
China lay rich and undeveloped and the rest of the world was 
covetous and it had made bargains with China, generally to China's 
disadvantage, which enabled the world to go in and exploit her 
riches. I am not now going to discuss the merits of that question, 
because it has no merits. The whole thing was bad, but it was not 
unprecedented. Germany obliged China to give her what China had 
given others previously. Immediately thereafter China was obliged, 
because she had done this thing, to make fresh concessions to Great 
Britain of a similar sort, to make fresh concessions to France, to 
make concessions of a similar kind to Russia. It was then that she 
gave Russia Port Arthur and Talien-Wan. 



316 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

Now, remember what followed. The Government of the United 
States did not make any kind of protest against any of those cessions. 
We had at that time one of the most public-spirited and humane men 
in the Executive Chair at Washington that have ever graced that 
chair — I mean William McKinley — and his Secretary of State was 
a man whom we have all always delighted to praise, Mr. John Hay. 
But they made no protest against the cession to Germany, or to Rus- 
sia, or to Great Britain, or to France. The only thing they insisted 
on was that none of those powers should close the door of commerce 
to the goods of the United States in those territories which they were 
taking from China. They took no interest, I mean so far as what 
they did was concerned, in the liberties and rights of China. They 
were interested only in the rights of the merchants of the United 
States. I want to hasten to add that I do not say this even to imply 
criticism on those gentlemen, because as international law stood then 
it would have been an unfriendly act for them to protest in any one 
of these cases. Until this treaty was written in Paris it was not even 
proposed that it should be the privilege of anybody to protest in any 
such case if his own rights were not directly affected. Then, some 
time after that, followed the war between Russia and Japan. You 
remember where that war was brought to a close — by delegates of 
the two powers sitting at Portsmouth, N. H., at the invitation of Mr. 
Roosevelt, who was then President. In that treaty, Port Arthur — 
China's Port Arthur, ceded to Russia — was ceded to Japan, and the 
Government of the United States, though the discussions were occur- 
ring on its own territory, made no suggestion even to the contrary. 
Now, the treaty in Paris does the same thing with regard to the Ger- 
man rights in China. It cedes them to the victorious power, I mean 
to the power that took them by force of arms, the power which was 
in the Pacific victorious in this war, namely, to Japan, and there is 
no precedent which would warrant our making a protest. Not only 
that, but, in the meantime, since this war began, Great Britain and 
France entered into solemn covenants of treaty with Japan that if 
she would come into the war and continue her operations against 
Germany in the Pacific they would lend their whole influence and 
power to the cession to Japan of everything that Germany had in 
the Pacific, whether on the mainland or in the islands, north of the 
Equator, so that if we were to reject this provision in the treats- 
Great Britain and France would not in honor be at liberty to reject 
it, and we would have to devise means to do what, let me say with all 
solemnity only war could do, force them to break their promise to 
Japan. 

Well, you say, "Then, is it just all an ugly, hopeless business?" 
It is not, if we adopt the league of nations. The Government of the 
United States was not bound by these treaties. The Government of 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 317 

the United States was at liberty to get anything out of the bad busi- 
ness that it could get by persuasion and argument, and it was upon 
the instance of the Government of the United States that Japan 
promised to return to China what none of these other powers has yet 
promised to return — all rights of sovereignty that China had granted 
Germany over any portion of the Province of Shantung — the great- 
est concession in that matter that has ever been made by any power 
that has interested itself in the exploits of China — and to retain 
only what corporations out of many countries have long enjoyed in 
China, the right to run the railroad and extend its line to certain 
points and to continue to work the mines that have already been 
opened. Not only that, but I said a minute ago that Mr. Hay and 
Mr. McKinley were not at liberty to protest. Turn to the league of 
nations and see what will be the situation then. Japan is a member, 
of the league of nations, all these other powers that have exploited 
China are members, and they solemnly promise to respect and pre- 
serve the territorial integrity and existing political independence of 
China. Not only that, but in the next article the international law 
of the world is revolutionized. It is there provided that it is the 
friendly right of any member of the league at any time to call 
attention to anything anywhere that is likely to disturb the peace of 
the world or the good understanding between nations upon which the 
peace of the world depends. If we had had the covenant at that 
time, Mr. McKinley could, and I venture to say would, have said to 
Germany, " This is directly none of our business, for we are seeking 
no competitive enterprise of that sort in China, but this is an in- 
vasion of the territorial integrity of China. We have promised, and 
you have promised, to preserve and respect that integrity, and if you 
do not keep that promise it will destroy the good understanding 
which exists between the peaceful nations of the world. It will be 
an invasion, a violation of the essential principle of peace and of 
justice.'' Do you suppose for one moment that if the matter had 
been put in that aspect, with the attention of the world called to it 
by the great power of the United States, Germany would have per- 
sisted in that enterprise? 

How had she begun it ? She had made the excuse of the death of 
two German missionaries at the hands of irresponsible mobs in cer- 
tain Provinces of China an excuse for taking this valuable part of 
China's territory. Ah, my fellow citizens, it makes anybody who 
regards himself as a Christian blush to think what Christian nations 
have done in the name of protecting Christianity ! But it can not 
be done any more under the league of nations. It can not be done 
without being cited to the bar of mankind, and if Germany had been 
cited to the bar of mankind before she began her recent tragical 
enterprise she never would have undertaken it. You can not expose 



318 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

such matters to the cool discussion of the world without disclosing 
all their ugliness, their illegitimacy, their brutality. This treaty 
sets up, puts in operation, so to say, puts into commission the moral 
force of the world. Our choice with regard to Shantung, there- 
fore, is to keep out of the treaty, for we can not change it in that 
respect, or go in and be an effective friend of China. I for one am 
ready to do anything or to cooperate in anything in my power to 
be a friend, and a helpful friend, to that great, thoughtful, ancient, 
interesting, helpless people — in capacity, in imagination, in industry, 
in numbers one of the greatest peoples in the world and entitled to 
the wealth that lies underneath their feet and all about them in that 
land which they have not as yet known how to bring to its develop- 
ment. 

There are other things that have troubled the opponents of the 
league. One thing is they want to be sure they can get out. That 
does not interest me very much. If I go into a thing, my first 
thought is not how I can get out. My first thought is not how I can 
scuttle, but how I can help, how I can be effective in the game, how 
I can make the influence of America tell for the guidance and salva- 
tion of the world — not how I can keep out of trouble. I want to 
get into any kind of trouble that will help liberate mankind. I do 
not want always to be thinking about my skin or my pocketbook or 
my friendships. Is it just as comfortable to die quietly in your bed, 
never having done anything worth anything, as to die as some of 
those fellows that we shall always love when we remember them 
died upon the field of freedom ? Is there any choice ? Do you think 
anybody outside the family is going to be interested in any souve- 
nir of you after you are dead? They are going to be interested in 
souvenirs of the boys in khaki, whether they are of their family or 
not. They are going to touch with reverence any sword or musket 
or rapid-fire gun or cannon that was fired for liberty upon the fields 
of France. I am not thinking of sitting by the door and keeping 
my hand on the knob, but if you want to do that you can get out 
any time you want to. There is absolutely nothing in the covenant 
to prevent you. I was present at its formulation, and I know what 
I am talking about, besides being able to understand the English 
language. It not only meant this, but said it, that any nation can, 
upon two years' notice, withdraw at any time, provided that at the 
time it withdraws it has fulfilled its international obligations and 
its obligations under the covenant, but it does not make anybody 
judge as to whether it has fulfilled those obligations, except the 
nation that withdraws. 

The only thing that can ever keep you in the league is being 
ashamed to get out. You can get out whenever you want to after two 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 319 

years' notice, and the only risk you run is having the rest of the world 
think you ought not to have got out. I, for my part, am not very 
sensitive about that, because I have a memory. I have read the his- 
tory of the United States. We are in the habit of keeping our inter- 
national obligations, and I do not believe that there will ever come 
a time when any just question can be raised as to whether we have 
fulfilled them or not. Therefore, I am not afraid to go before the 
jury of mankind at any time on the record of the United States with 
regard to the fulfillment of its international obligations; and when 
these gentlemen who are criticizing it once feel, if they ever should 
feel, the impulse of courage instead of the impulse of cowardice, they 
will realize how much better it feels. Your blood is at least warm 
and comfortable, and the red corpuscles are in command, when you 
have got some spunk in you ; but when you have not, when you are 
afraid somebody is going to put over something on you, you are 
furtive and go about looking out for things, and your blood is cold 
and you shiver when you turn a dark corner. That is not a picture 
of the United States. When I think of these great frontier communi- 
ties, I fancy I can hear the confident tread, tread, tread of the great 
hosts that crossed this continent. They were not afraid of what they 
were going to find in the next canyon. They were not looking over 
their shoulders to see if the trail was clear behind them. They were 
making a trail in front of them and they had not the least notion of 
going back. 

What I have come to suggest to you, my fellow citizens, is that you 
do what I am sure all the rest of our fellow countrymen are doing — 
clear the deck of these criticisms, that really have nothing in them, 
and look at the thing in its large aspect, in its majesty. Particularly, 
look at it as a fulfillment of the destiny of the United States, for it 
is nothing less. At last, after this long century and more of blood 
and terror, the world has come to the vision that that little body of 
3,000,000 people, strung along the Atlantic coast of this continent, 
had in that far year 1776. Men in Europe laughed at them, at this 
little handful of dreamers, this little body of men who talked dog- 
matically about liberty, and since then that fire which they started on 
that little coast has consumed every autocratic government in the 
world, every civilized autocratic government, and now at last the 
flame has leaped to Berlin, and there is the funeral pyre of the Ger- 
man Empire. 



ADDRESS AT TABERNACLE, SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, 

SEPTEMBER 23, 1919. 



Gov. Bamberger, President Grant, my fellow countrymen, it is 
indeed inspiring to stand before this great audience, and yet I feel 
that I have come to present a theme which deserves the greatest of all 
audiences. I must admit to a very considerable degree of unaffected 
diffidence in presenting this theme, because the theme is so much bigger 
than an} 7 man's capacity to present it adequately. It is a theme which 
must engage the enthusiastic support of every lover of humanity and 
every man who professes Christian conviction, because we are now as 
n nation to make what I can not help characterizing as the most critical 
decision we have ever made in the history of America. We sent our 
bo} T s across the sea to defeat the purposes of Germany, but we engaged 
that after we had defeated the purposes of Germany we would com- 
plete what they had begun and effect such arrangements of interna- 
tional concert as would make it impossible for any such attempt ever 
to be made again. The question therefore is, Shall we see it through 
or shall we now at this most critical juncture of the whole transaction 
turn away from our associates in the war and decline to complete and 
fulfill our sacred promise to mankind ? 

I have now crossed the continent, my fellow countrymen, and am 
on my way East again, and I feel qualified to render testimony as 
to the attitude of this great Nation toward the covenant of the league. 
I say without the slightest hesitation that an overwhelming majority 
of our fellow countrymen purpose that this covenant shall be adopted. 
One by one the objections to it have melted away. One by one it has 
become evident that the objections urged against it were without 
sufficient foundation. One by one it has become impossible to sup- 
port them as objections, and at last we come to the point of critical 
choice as to the very heart of the whole matter. 

You know it troubled some of our public men because they were 
afraid it was not perfectly clear that we could withdraw from this 
arrangement whenever we wanted to. There is no justification for 
doubt in any part of the language of the covenant on that point. 
The United States is at liberty to withdraw at any time upon two 
141677— S. Doc. 120, 66-1 21 321 



322 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

years' notice, the only restriction being that when it withdraws it 
shall have fulfilled its international obligations and its obligations 
under the covenant of the league, but it is left to its own conscience 
and to no other tribunal whatever to determine whether those obliga- 
tions have been fulfilled or not. I, for one, am not afraid of the 
judgment of mankind with regard to matters of this sort. The 
United States never has failed to fulfill its international obligations. 
It never will fail, and I am ready to go to the great jury of humanity 
upon that matter at any time that within our judgment we should 
withdraw from this arrangement. But I am not one of those who 
when they go into a great enterprise think first of how they are 
going to get out of it. I think first of how I am going to stay in 
it and how, with the power and influence I can command, I am 
going to promote the objects of the great concert and association 
which is being formed. And that is the temper of America. 

I was quoting the other night the jest of an American wit who, 
commenting upon the extraordinary rapidity with which we had 
trained an army, said that it was easier to train an army in America 
than anywhere else ; it took less time, because you had to train them 
to go only one way. They showed the effects of the training. They 
went only one way, and the issues that we are now debating were 
really decided at Chateau-Thierry and Belleau Wood and in the 
Argonne. We are now put to the test by these men who fought, as 
they were put to the test by those of us who ordered them to the field 
of battle. And the people of the United States have the same training 
as their Army ; they do not look back, they go only one way. 

The doubt as to whether some superior authority to our own Con- 
gress could intervene in matters of domestic policy is also removed. 
The language of the covenant expressly excludes the authorities of 
the league from taking any action or expressing any judgment with 
regard to domestic policies like immigration, like naturalization, like 
the tariff, like all of those things which have lain at the center so 
often of our political action and of our choice of policy. 

Nobody doubts any longer that the covenant gives explicit, un- 
qualified recognition to the Monroe doctrine. Indeed, it does more 
than that. It adopts the principle of the Monroe doctrine as the 
principle of the world. The principle of the Monroe doctrine is that 
no nation has the right to interfere with the affairs or to impose its 
own will in any way upon another nation in the Western Hemisphere, 
and President Monroe said to the Governments of Europe, "Any 
attempt of that sort on the part of any Government of Europe will be 
regarded as an act unfriendlv to the United States." The covenant of 
the league indorses that. The covenant of the league says that noth- 
ing in that document shall be construed as affecting the validity of 
the Monroe doctrine, which means that if any power seeks to impose 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 323 

its will upon any American State in North America, Central America, 
or South America, the world now acknoAv ledges the right of the Gov- 
ernment of the United States to take the initiative and check that 
action. 

The forces of objection being driven out of one position after 
another are now centering upon the heart of the league itself. 
I have come here to-night, my fellow countrymen, to discuss that 
critical matter that you constantly see in the newspapers, which we 
call " reservations." I want you to have a very clear idea of what 
is meant b}^ reservations. Reservations are to all intents and pur- 
poses equivalent to amendments. I can say, I believe with confidence, 
that it is the judgment of the people of the United States that neither 
the treaty nor the covenant should be amended. Very well, then ; look 
at the character of the reservations. What does a reservation mean? 
It means a stipulation that this particular Government insists upon 
interpreting its duty under that covenant in a special way, insists 
upon interpreting it in a way in which other Governments, it may 
be, do not interpret it. This thing, when we ratify it, is a contract. 
You can not alter so much as the words of a contract without the 
consent of the other parties. Any reservation will have to be car- 
ried to all the other signatories, Germany included, and we shall 
have to get the consent of Germany, among the rest, to read this cove- 
nant in some special way in which we prefer to read it in the inter- 
est of the safety of America. That, to my mind, is one of the most 
unacceptable things that could happen. To my mind, to reopen the 
question of the meaning of this clearly written treaty is to reopen 
negotiations with Germany, and I do not believe that any part of 
the world is in the temper to do that. In order to put this matter 
in such a shape as will lend itself to concrete illustration, let me 
read you what I understand is a proposed form of reservation : 

The United States assumes no obligation under the provisions of article 10 
to preserve the territorial integrity or political independence of any other 
country or to interfere in controversies between other nations, whether mem- 
bers of the league or not, or to employ the military and naval forces of the 
United States under any article of the treaty for any purpose, unless in any 
particular case the Congress, which under the Constitution has the sole power 
to declare war or authorize the employment of the military and naval forces of 
the United States, shall by act or joint resolution so declare. 

That is a rejection of the covenant. That is an absolute refusal 
to carry any part of the same responsibility that the other members, 
of the league carry. Does the United States want to be in on that 
special footing? Does the United States want to say to the nations 
with whom it stood in this great struggle, " We have seen you through 
on the battle field, but now we are done. We are not going to stand 
oy you"? Article 10 is an engagement on the part of all the great 



324 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

fighting nations of the world, because all the great fighting nations are 
going to be members of the league, that they will respect and pre- 
serve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and the 
existing political independence of the other members of the league. 
That is cutting at the heart of all wars. Every war of any conse- 
quence that you can cite originated in an attempt to seize the terri- 
tory or interfere with the political independence of some other na- 
tion. We went into this war with the sacred promise that we re- 
garded all nations as having the same rights, whether they were 
weak or strong, and unless we engage to sustain the weak we have 
guaranteed that the strong will prevail, we have guaranteed that 
imperialistic enterprise may revive, we have guaranteed that there 
is no barrier to the ambition of nations that have the power to domi- 
nate, we have abdicated the whole position of right and substi- 
tuted the principle of might. This is the heart of the covenant, and 
what are these gentlemen afraid of? Nothing can be done under 
that article of the treaty without the consent of the United States. 
I challenge them to draw any other deduction from the provisions 
of the covenant itself. In every case where the league takes action 
the unanimous vote of the council of the league is necessary; the 
United States is a permanent member of the council of the league, 
and its affirmative vote is in every case necessary for every affirma- 
tive, or for that matter every negative, action. 

Let us go into particulars. These gentlemen say, " We do not want 
the United States drawn into every little European squabble." Of 
course, we do not, and under the league of nations it is entirely 
within our choice whether we will be or not. The normal processes 
of the action of the league are certainly to be this: When trouble 
arises in the Balkans, when somebody sets up a fire somewhere in 
central Europe among those little nations, which are for the time 
being looking upon one another with a good deal of jealousy and 
suspicion, because the passions of the world have not cooled — when- 
ever that happens, the council of the league will confer as to the best 
methods of putting out the fire. If you want to put out a fire in 
Utah, you do not send to Oklahoma for the fire engine. If you 
want to put out a fire in the Balkans, if you want to stamp out the 
smoldering flame in some part of central Europe, you do not send 
to the United States for troops. The council of the league selects 
the powers which are most ready, most avilable, most suitable, and 
selects them only at their own consent, so that the United States 
would in no such circumstances conceivably be drawn in unless the 
flame spead to the world. And would they then be left out, even 
if they were not members of the league? You have seen the fire 
spread to the world once, and did not you go in? If you saw it 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 325 

spread again, if you saw human liberty again imperiled, would you 
wait to be a member of the league to go in ? 

My fellow citizens, the whole thing goes directly to the conscience 
of the Nation. If tire fight is big enough to draw the United States 
in, I predict that they will be drawn in anyhow, and if it is not big 
enough to bring them in inevitably, they can go in or stay out ac- 
cording to their own decision. Why are these gentlemen afraid? 
There is no force to oblige the United States to do anything except 
moral force. Is any man, any proud American, afraid that the 
United States will resist the duress of duty? I am intensely 
conscious of the great conscience of this Nation. I see the inevi- 
tableness, as well as the dignity and the greatness, of such declara- 
tions as President Grant has made aligning all the great organized 
moral forces of the world on the same side. It is inconceivable they 
should be on different sides. 

There is no necessity for the last part of this reservation. Eveiy 
public man, every statesman, in the world knows, and I say that 
advisedly, that in order that the United States should go to war it 
is necessary for the Congress to act. They do not have to be told 
that, but that is not what this resolution says. This resolution says 
the United States assumes no obligation under the provisions of 
article 10 to preserve the territorial integrity or political independ- 
ence of any other country — washes it hands of the whole business; 
says " We do not want even to create the presumption that we will 
do the right thing. We do not want to be committed even to a great 
principle, but we want to sa} x that every time a case arises the Con- 
gress will independently take it up as if there were no conevant and 
determine whether there is any moral obligation; and after de- 
termining that, determining whether it will act upon that moral 
obligation or not, it will act." In other words, that is an absolute 
withdrawal from the obligations of article 10. That is why I say 
that it would be a rejection of the covenant and thereby a rejection 
of the treaty, for the treaty can not be executed without the covenant. 

I appeal, and I appeal with confidence, my fellow countrymen, to 
the men whose judgment I am told has approved of reservations of 
this sort. I appeal to them to look into the matter again. I know 
some of the gentlemen who are quoted as approving a reservation 
of that sort; I know them to be high-minded and patriotic Ameri- 
cans, and I know them to be men whose character and judgment I 
entirely respect, and whose motives I respect as much as I respect 
the motives of any man, but they have not looked into the matter. 
Are they willing to ask the rest of the world to go into this covenant 
and to let the United States assume none of its obligations? Let us 
have all the advantages of it and none of the responsibilities? Are 



326 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON". 1 

they willing that proud America should ask for special exemptions, 
should show a special timidity, should ask to go into an arrangement 
depending upon a judgment when its own judgment is a different 
judgment? I confidently believe, my fellow citizens, that they will 
do no such thing. This is not an interpretation of the covenant. I 
have been trying to interpret it to you. This is a rejection of the 
-covenant, and if this is adopted, the whole treaty falls to the ground, 
for, my fellow citizens, we must realize that a great and final choice 
Is between this people. Either we are going to guarantee civiliza- 
tion or we are going to abandon it. I use the word with perhaps the 
admission that it may carry a slight exaggeration, but nevertheless 
advisedly, when I say abandon civilization, for what is the present 
condition of civilization? Everywhere^ even in the United States, 
there is an attitude of antagonism toward the ordered processes of 
government. We feel the evil influence on this side of the Atlantic, 
and on the other side of the Atlantic every public man knows that 
it is knocking at the door of his government. 

While this unrest is assuming this menacing form of rebellion 
against authority, of determination to cut roads of force through the 
regular processes of government, the world is waiting on America, for 
— I say it with entire respect for the representatives of other govern- 
ments, but I say it Avith knowledge — the GoA^ernment of the United 
States is the only government in the world that the rest of the world 
trusts. It knows that the Government of the United States speaks 
for the people of the United States, that it is not anybody's master, 
but the servant of a great people. It knows that that people can al- 
ways oblige its governors to be its servants. It knows that nobody 
has ever dared defy the public judgment of the people of the United 
States, and it knows that that public judgment is on the side of right 
and justice and of peace. It has seen the United States do what no 
other nation ever did.. When Ave fought the Avar with Spain there 
Avas many a cynical smile on the other side of the Avater Avhen Ave said 
that Ave Avere going to win freedom for Cuba and then present it to 
her. They said, "Ah, yes; under the control of the United States. 
They will never let go of that rich island which they can exploit so 
much to their own advantage?" When Ave kept that promise and 
proved our absolute disinterestedness, and, notwithstanding the fact 
that Ave had beaten Spain until she had to accept anything that Ave 
dictated, paid her $20,000,000 for something that we could have 
taken, namely, the Philippine Islands, all the Avorlcl stood at amaze 
and said, "Is it true, after all, that this people believes and means Avhat 
it says? Is it true, after all, that this is a great altruistic force in the 
world ? " 

And now look what has happened, my felloAv citizens. Poland, 
Bohemia, the released parts of Roumania, Jugo-Slavia — there are 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 327 

kinsmen, I dare say, of these people in this audience — these could, 
none of them, have won their own independence any more than Cuba 
could have won hers, and they were under an authority just as reck- 
less in the exercise of its force, just as regardless of the people and 
of humanity, as the Spanish Government ever was in Cuba and the 
Philippines; and by the force of the world these people have been 
liberated. Now the world is waiting to hear whether the United 
States will join in doing for them what it sanely did for Cuba, guar- 
anteeing their freedom and saying to them, " What we have given to 
you no man shall take away." It is our final heroic test of character, 
and I for one have not the slightest doubt as to what the result of the 
test is going to be, because I know that at heart this people loves free- 
dom and right and justice more than it loves money and material 
prosperity or any of the things that anybody can get but nobody 
can keep unless they have elevation of spirit enough to see the horizons 
of the destiny of man. 

Instead of wishing to ask to stand aside, get the benefits of the 
league, but share none of its burdens or responsibilities, I for my 
part want to go in and accept what is offered to us, the leadership of 
the world. A leadership of what sort, my fellow citizens? Not a 
leadership that leads men along the lines by which great nations 
can profit out of weak nations, not an exploiting power, but a 
liberating power, a power to show the world that when America was 
born it was indeed a finger pointed toward those lands into which 
men could deploy some of these days and live in happy freedom, 
look each other in the eyes as equals, see that no man was put upon, 
that no people were forced to accept authority which was not of their 
own choice, and that out of the general generous impulse of the 
human genius and the human spirit we were lifted along the levels 
of civilization to days when there should be wars no more, but men 
should govern themselves in peace and amity and quiet. That is the 
leadership we said we wanted, and now the world offers it to us. It 
is inconceivable that we should reject it. It is inconceivable that 
men should put any conditions upon accepting it, particularly — for 
I speak this with a certain hurt pride, my fellow citizens, as an 
American — particularly when we are so safeguarded that the world 
under the covenant can not do a thing that we do not consent to being 
done. Other nations, other governments, were just as jealous of 
their sovereignty as we have been, and this guarantees the sovereignty 
of all the equal members of this great union of nations. There is only 
one nation for the time being excluded. That is Germany, and Ger- 
many is excluded only in order that she may go through a period of 
probation, only in order that she may prove to the world that she 
has made a real and permanent change in her constitution, and that 



328 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON". 

hereafter, not Wilhelmstrasse but the votes of the German people will- 
determine the policy of the German Government. 

If I may say so without even by implication involving great public 
men whom I entirely respect, I want to say that the only popular 
forces back of serious reservations, the only popular forces back of 
the impulse to reject any part of this treaty, proceed from exactly 
the same sources that the pro-German propaganda proceeded from. 
I ask the honorable and enlightened men who I believe thoughtlessly 
favor reservations such as I have read to reflect upon that and ex- 
amine into the truth of it, and to reflect upon this proposition : We, 
by holding off from this league, serve the purposes of Germany, for 
what Germany has sought throughout the war was, first, to prevent 
our going in, and, then, to separate us in interest and purpose from 
the other Governments with which we were associated. Now, shall 
we by the vote of the United States Senate do for Germany what she 
could not do with her arms? We shall be doing it, whether we in- 
tend it or not. I exculpate the men I am thinking of entirely from 
the purpose of doing it ; it would be unworthy of me to suggest such 
a purpose, but I do suggest, I do state with confidence, that that is 
the only end that would be gained, because Germany is isolated from 
the other nations, and she desires nothing so much as that we should 
be isolated, because she knows that then the same kind of suspicion,. 
the same kind of hostility, the same kind of unfriendliness — that 
subtle poison that brings every trouble that comes between nations — 
will center on the United States as well as upon Germany. Her isola- 
tion will be broken; she will have a comrade, whether that nation 
wants to be her comrade or not, and what the lads did on the fields 
of France will be undone. We will allow Germany to do in 1919 
what she failed to do in 1918 ! 

It would be unworthy of me, my fellow citizens, in the responsible 
position into which you have put me, if I were to overstate any of 
these things. I have searched my conscience with regard to them. 
I believe I am telling 3^011 the sober truth, and I am telling you 
what I get, not by intuition, but through those many voices that in- 
evitably reach the Government and do not alway reach you from 
over sea. We know what the leading men of Germany are thinking 
and saying, and they are praying that the United States may stand 
off from the league. I call upon you, therefore, my fellow citizens, 
to look at this thing in a new aspect, to look upon it not with calcu- 
lations of interest, not with fear of responsibility, but with a con- 
sciousness of the great moral issue which the United States must 
now decide and which, having decided, it can not reverse. If we 
keep out of this league now, we can never enter it except alongside 
of Germany. We can either go in now or come in later with our 
recent enemies, and to adopt a reservation such as I have read, which 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON". 329 

explicitly renounces responsibility under the central engagement of 
the covenant, is to do nothing less than that. 

I hope that in order to strengthen this impression on' your minds 
you will take pains to read the treaty of peace. You need not read 
all of it; a lot of it is technical and you can skip that; but I want 
you to get a picture of what is in this great document. It is much 
too narrow a view of it to think of it as a treaty of peace with Ger- 
many. It is that, but it is very much more than a treaty of peace 
with Germany ; it is a treaty in which an attempt is made to set up 
the rights of peoples everywhere, for exactly the lines of this treaty 
are going to be projected — have been projected — into the treaty with 
Austria, into the treaty with Bulgaria, into the treaty with Hungary, 
into the treaty with Turkey. Everywhere the same principle is 
adopted, that the men who wrote the treaties at Versailles were not 
at liberty to give anybody's property to anybody else. It is the 
first great international agreement in the history of civilization that 
was not based on the opposite principle. Every other great inter- 
national arrangement has been a division of spoils, and this is an 
absolute renunciation of spoils, even with regard to the helpless 
parts of the world, even with regard to those poor benighted people 
in Africa, over whom Germany had exercised a selfish authority 
which exploited them and did not help them. Even they are not 
handed over to anybody else. The principle of annexation, the prin- 
ciple of extending sovereignty to territories that are not occupied 
by your own people, is rejected in this treaty. All of those regions 
are put under the trust of the league of nations, to be administered 
for the benefit of their inhabitants — the greatest humane arrange- 
ment that has ever been attempted — and the rules are laid down in 
the covenant itself which forbid any form of selfish exploitation of 
these helpless people by the agents of the league who will exercise- 
authority over them during the period of their development. 

Then see how free course is given to our sympathies. I believe 
that there is no region of the world toward which the sympathies of 
the United States have gone out so abundantly as to the poor people 
of Armenia, those people infinitely terrified and infinitely persecuted. 
We have poured out money, we have sent agents of all sorts to relieve 
their distress, and at every turn we have known that every dollar we 
spent upon them might be rendered useless by the cruel power which 
had authority over them, that under pretense of not being able to 
control its own forces in those parts of the empire, the Turkish Gov- 
ernment might say that it was unable to restrain the horrible mas- 
sacre* which have made that country a graA^eyard. Armenia is one 
of the regions that are to be under trust of the league of nations. 
Armenia is to be redeemed. The Turk is to be forbidden to exer- 
cise his authority there, and Christian people are not only to be al- 



330 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

lowed to aid. Armenia but they are to be allowed to protect Armenia. 
At last this great people, struggling through night after night of ter- 
ror, knowing not what day would see their land stained with blood, 
are now given a promise of safety, a promise of justice, a possibility 
that they may come out into a time when they can enjoy their own 
rights as free people, as they never dreamed they would be able to 
exercise them before. All of the great humane impulses of the 
human heart are expressed in this treaty, and we would be recreant to 
every humane obligation if we did not lend our whole force and, if 
necessary, make our utmost sacrifice to maintain its provisions. We 
are approaching the time in the discussions of the Senate when it 
will be determined what we are going to say about it, and I am here 
making this public appeal to you and, through you, to gentlemen who 
have favored such utterances as I have read to you to-night, to take 
a second thought upon the matter, to realize that what they are after 
is already accomplished. The United States can not be drawn into 
anything it does not wish to be drawn into, but the United States 
ought not to be itself in the position of saying, " You need not expect 
of us that we assume the same moral obligations that you assume. 
You need not expect of us that we will respect and preserve the ter- 
ritorial integrity and political independence of other nations." 

Let me remove another misapprehension about the clause, my 
fellow citizens. Almost every time it is quoted the words " external 
aggression " are left out of it. There was not a member of that con- 
ference with whom I conferred who wanted to put the least restraint 
upon the right of self-determination by any portion of the human 
family, who wished to put the slightest obstacle in the way of 
throwing off the yoke of any Government if that yoke should become 
intolerable. This does not guarantee any country, any Government, 
against an attempt on the part of its own subjects to throw off its 
authority. The United States could not keep its countenance and 
make a promise like that, because it began by doing that very thing. 
The glory of the United States is that when we were a little body 
of 3,000,000 people strung along the Atlantic coast we threw off the 
power of a great empire because it was not a power chosen by or con- 
sented to by ourselves. We hold that principle. We never will 
guarantee any Government against the exercise of that right, and 
no suggestion was made in the conference that we should. We 
merely ourselves promised to respect the territorial integrity and 
existing political independence of the other members of the league 
and to assist in preserving them against external aggression. 

And if Ave do not do that the taproot of war is still sunk deep 
into the fertile soil of human passion. I am for cutting the tap- 
root of Avar. I am for making an insurance against Avar, and I am 
prudent enough to take 10 per cent insurance if I can not get any 



ADDBESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 331 

more. I would be very pleased to get 25 per cent. I would be de- 
lighted to get 50 per cent, and here, in conscience. I believe we are 
getting 99 per cent. No man, no body of men, can give you absolute 
100 per cent insurance against war any more than they can give 
you 100 per cent insurance against losing your temper. You can not in- 
sure men against human passion, but notice what this covenant does : 
It provides nine months as a minimum for the cooling off of human 
passion. It is pretty hard to be crazy mad for nine months. If 
you stay crazy mad, or crazy anything else, for nine months, it 
will be wise to segregate you from your fellow citizens. The heart 
of this covenant, to which very few opponents ever draw attention, 
is this, that every great fighting nation in the world engages never 
to go to Avar without first having done one or the other of two things, 
without having either submitted the point in controversy to arbi- 
tration, in which case it promises absolutely to abide by the verdict or 
submit it to the council of the league of nations, not for decision 
but for discussion ; it agrees to lay all the documents and all the 
pertinent facts before the council and agrees that the council shall 
publish the documents and the facts to mankind, that it will give 
six months to the council for the consideration of the matter, and 
that, even if it does not accept the result, it will not go to war for 
three months after the opinion is rendered. You have nine months 
in which to accomplish all the gentle work of mediation, all the 
same work of discussion, all the quieting work of a full comprehen- 
sion of what the result of bringing the matter to the issue of war 
would be upon the nations immediately concerned and upon the na- 
tions of the world. And in article 11, which follows article 10, it is 
made the right of any member of the league to call 'attention to any- 
thing, anywhere, which is likely to affect the peace of the world 
or the good understanding between nations upon which the peace 
of the world depends. So that, after the storm begins to gather, 
you can call the attention of the Avorld to it. and the cleansing, 
purifying, cooling processes of public opinion will at once begin to 
operate. 

When a very important part of Shantung Province was ceded by 
China to Germany in March, 1898, the Government of the United 
States uttered not a single protest. One of the most enlightened and 
humane men that have ever sat in the executive chair was President 
of the United States William McKinley. One of the ablest Secre- 
taries of State in the long list of distinguished men Avho have occu- 
pied that office was associated with him as Secretary of State, the 
Hon. John Hay. They made not a single intimation of protest. 
Why ? Because under international law as it was, and as it is until 
this covenant is adopted, it would have been a hostile act for them 
to do any such thing unless they could show that the material or 



332 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

political interest of the United States was directly affected. The only 
ground which they insisted upon was lhat Germany should not close 
Shantung Province to the trade of the United States. They could 
not lift a little finger to help China. They could only try to help the 
trade of the United States. Immediately after that cession China 
made similar cessions to England, to Russia, to France, and again 
no protest, only an insistence that the door should be kept open to 
our goods — not to our moral ideas, not to our sympathy with China,. 
not to our sense of right violated, but to our merchandise. You do 
not hear anything about the cessions in that year to Great Britain 
or to France, because, unhappily, they were not unprecedented, as> 
the cession to Germany was not unprecedented. Poor China had 
done the like not once but many times before. What happened after- 
wards ? In the treat}^ between Japan and Eussia, after the Japanese- 
Russian war, a treat} signed on our own territory — in Portsmouth,. 
N. H. — Port Arthur, the Chinese territory ceded to Russia, was trans- 
ferred to Japan. Here were our own people sitting about, here was 
our own Government that had invited these gentlemen to sit at Ports- 
mouth — did they object to Port Arthur being not handed back to 
China but handed to Japan? 

I am not going to stop, my fellow citizens, to discuss the Shantung 
provision in all its aspects, but what I want to call your attention to 
is that just so soon as this covenant is ratified every nation in the 
world will have the right to speak out for China. And I want to 
say very frankly, and I ought to add that the representatives of 
those great nations themselves admit, that Great Britain and France 
and the other powers which have insisted upon similar concessions 
in China will be put in a position where they will have to recon- 
sider them. This is the only way to serve and redeem China, un- 
less, indeed, you want to. start a Avar for the purpose. At the be- 
ginning of the war and during the war Great Britain and France 
engaged by solemn treaty with Japan that if she would come into 
the war and continue in the war, she could have, provided she in the 
meantime took it by force of arms, what Germany had in China.. 
Those are treaties already in force. They are not waiting for rati- 
fication. France and England can not withdraw from those obliga- 
tions, and it will serve China not one iota if we should dissent from 
the Shantung arrangement; but by being parties to that arrange- 
ment we can insist upon the promise of Japan — the promise which 
the other governments have not matched — that she will return to- 
China immediately all sovereign rights within the Province of Shan- 
tung. We have got that for her now, and under the operations of 
article 11 and of article 10 it will be impossible for any nation to 
make any further inroads either upon the territorial integrity or 
upon the political independence of China. I for one want to say that 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 333 

m} 7 heart goes out to that great people, that learned people, that ac- 
complished people, that honest people, hundreds of millions strong 
but never adequately organized for the exercise of force, therefore 
always at the mercy of anyone who has effective armies or navies, 
always subject to be commanded, and never in a position unassisted 
by the world to insist upon its own rights. 

It is a test — an acid test : Are you willing to go into the great 
adventure of liberating hundreds of millions of human beings from 
the threat of foreign power ? If you are timid, I can assure you you 
can do it without shedding a drop of human blood. If you are 
squeamish about fighting, I will tell you you will not have to fight. 
The only force that outlasts all others and is finally triumphant is 
the moral judgment of mankind. Why is it that when a man tells a 
lie about you you do not wince, but when he tells the truth about you, 
if it is not creditable, then you wince ? The only thing you are afraid 
of is the truth. The only thing you dare not face is the truth. The 
only thing that will get you sooner or later, no matter how you 
sneak or dodge, is the truth; and the only thing that will conquer 
nations is the truth. No nation is going to look the calm judgment of 
mankind in the face for nine months and then go to war. You can 
illustrate the great by the little. I dare say you have taken time to 
cool off sometimes. I know I have. It is very useful for a person, 
particularly with a Scotch disposition like mine, to withdraw from 
human society when he is mad all through and just think about the 
situation and reflect upon the consequences of making a conspicuous 
ass of himself. It is for that reason that I have always said that if 
you have an acquaintance whom you suspect of being a fool, en- 
courage him to hire a hall. There is nothing that tests a man's good 
sense like exposure to the air. We are applying this great healing, 
sanitary influence to the affairs of nations and of men, and we can 
apply it only by the processes of peace which are offered to us after a 
conference, which I can testify was taken part in in the knowledge 
and in the spirit that never obtained before in any such conference ; 
that we were not at liberty to work out the policy and ambition of 
any nation, but that our single duty and our single opportunit} 7 was 
to put the peoples of the world in possession of their own affairs. 

So, as much of the case, my fellow citizens, as I can la} r before you 
on a single occasion — as much of this varied and diversified theme — 
is laid before you, and I ask your assistance to redeem the reputation 
of the United States. I ask you to make felt everywhere that it is 
useful to make it felt, not by way of threat, not by way of menace 
of an} 7 sort, but by way of compelling judgment, that the thing for 
us to do is to redeem the promises of America made in solemn pres- 
ence of mankind when we entered this war, for I see a happy vision 



334 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

before the world, my fellow countrymen. Every previous interna- 
tional conference was based upon the authority of governments. 
This, for the first time, was based upon the authority of peoples. It 
is, therefore, the triumphant establishment of the principle of democ- 
racy throughout the world, but only the establishment of the prin- 
ciple of political democracy. What the world now insists upon — 
order and peace in order to consider and in order to achieve — is the 
establishment of industrial democracy, is the establishment of such 
relationships between those who direct labor and those who perform 
labor as shall make a real community of interest, as shall make a 
real community of purpose, as shall lift the whole level of industrial 
achievement above bargain and sale, into a great method of coopera- 
tion by which men, purposing the same thing and justly organizing 
the same thing, may bring about a state of happiness and of pros- 
perity such as the world has never known before. We want to be 
friends of each other as well as friends of mankind. We want Amer- 
ica to be united in spirit as well as the world. We want America 
to be a body of brethren, and if America is a body of brethren, then 
you may be sure that its leadership will bring the same sort of com- 
radeship and intimacy of spirit and purity of purpose to the counsels 
and achievements of mankind. 



ADDRESS AT CHEYENNE, WYO. 

SEPTEMBER 24, 1919. 



Gov. Care} 7 , my fellow countrymen, it is with genuine satisfaction 
that I find myself in this great State, which I have only too seldom 
visited, and I appreciate this close contact with a body of its citizens 
in order that I may make clear some of the matters which have 
emerged in the discussion in the midst of which we now find our- 
selves. Gov. Carey is quite right in saying that no document ever 
drew upon it more widespread discussion than the great treaty of 
peace with which your representatives returned from Paris. It is 
not to be wondered at, my fellow citizens, because that treaty is a 
unique document. It is the most remarkable document, I venture to 
say, in human history, because in it is recorded a complete reversal 
of the processes of government which had gone on throughout prac- 
tically the whole history of mankind. The example that we set in 
1776, which some statesmen in Europe affected to disregard and 
others presumed to ridicule, nevertheless set fires going in the hearts 
of men which no influence was able to quench, and one after another 
the Governments of the world have yielded to the influences of de- 
mocracy. No man has been able to stay the tide, and there came a 
day when there was only one bulwark standing against it. That was 
in Berlin and Vienna — standing in the only territory which had not 
been conquered by the liberal forces of the opinion of the world, 
continued to stand fast where there was planted a pair of Govern- 
ments that could use their people as they pleased, as pawns and in- 
struments in a game of ambition, send them to the battle field with- 
out condescending to explain to them why they were sent, send them 
to the battle field to work out a dominion over free peoples on the 
part of a Government that had never been liberalized and made free. 

The world did not realize in 1914 that it had come to the final 

grapple of principle. It was only by slow degrees that we realized 

that we had any part in the war. T\ T e started the forces in 1776, as 

I have said, that made this war inevitable, but we were a long time 

realizing that, after all, that was what was at issue. We had been 

accustomed to regarding Europe as a field of intriguing, of rival 

335 



336 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

ambitions, and of attempts to establish empire, and at first we merely 
got the impression that this was one of the usual European wars, 
to which, unhappily, mankind had become only too accustomed. You 
know how unwilling we were to go into it. I can speak for myself. 
I made every effort to keep this country out of the war, until it came 
to my conscience, as it came to yours, that after all it was our war 
as well as Europe's war, that the ambition of these central empires 
was directed against nothing less than the liberty of the world, and 
that if we were indeed, what we had always professed to be, cham- 
pions of the liberty of the world, it was not within our choice to 
keep out of the great enterprise. We went in just in time. I can 
testify, my fellow countrymen, that the hope of Europe had sunk 
very low when the American troops began to throng overseas. I can 
testify that they had begun to fear that the terror would be realized 
and that the German power would be established. At first they were 
incredulous that our men could come in force enough to assist them. 
At first they thought that it was only a moral encouragement they 
would get from seeing that gallant emblem of the Stars and Stripes 
upon their fields. Presently they realized that the tide was real, 
that here came men by the thousands, by the hundreds of thousands, 
by the millions ; that there was no end to the force which would now 
be asserted to rescue the free peoples of the world from the terror of 
autocracy; and America had the infinite privilege of fulfilling her 
destiny and saving the world. I do not hesitate to say, as a sober 
interpretation of history, that American soldiers saved the liberties 
of the world. 

I want to remind you of all this, my fellow citizens, because it is 
pertinent to the discussion that is now going on. We saved the liber- 
ties of the world, and we must stand by the liberties of the world. 
We can not draw back. You remember what happened in that fate- 
ful battle in which our men first took part. You remember how the 
French lines had been beaten and separated and broken at Chateau- 
Thierry, and you remember how the gates seemed open for the ad- 
vancement of the Germans upon Paris. Then a body of men, a little 
body of men — American soldiers and American marines — against 
the protests of French officers, against the command of the remote 
commanders, nevertheless dared to fill that breach, stopped that ad- 
vance, turned the Germans back, and never allowed them to turn 
their faces forward again. They were advised to go back, and they 
asked the naive American question, " What did we come over here 
for ? We did not come over here to go back ; we came over here to go 
forward." And they never went in any other direction. The men 
who went to Chateau-Thierry, the men who went into Balleau Wood, 
the men who did what no other troops had been able to do in the 
Argonne, never thought of turning back, not only, but they never 



ADDKESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 337 

thought of making any reservations on their service. They never 
thought of saying, " We are going to do this much of the job and 
then scuttle and leave you to do the rest." I am here, I am on this 
journey, to help this Nation, if I can by my counsel, to fulfill and 
complete the task which the men who died upon the battle fields of 
France began, and I am not going to turn back any more than they 
did. I am going to keep my face just as they kept their face — for- 
ward toward the enemy. 

My friends — I use the words advisedly — the only organized forces 
in this country, outside of Congressional Halls, against this treaty 
are the forces of hyphenated Americans. I beg you to observe that 
I sa} T the only organized forces, because I would not include many 
individuals whom I know in any such characterization, but I do re- 
peat that it is the pro-German forces and the other forces that showed 
their hyphen during the war that are now organized against this 
treaty. We can please nobod}^ in America except these people by 
rejecting it or qualifying it in our acceptance of it. I want you to 
recall the circumstances of this Great War lest we forget. We must 
not forget to redeem absolutely and without qualification the 
promises of America in this great enterprise. I have crossed the 
continent now, my friends, and am a part of my way back. I can 
testify to the sentiment of the American people. It is unmistakable. 
The overwhelming majority of them demand the ratification of this 
treaty, and they demand it because, whether they have analyzed it 
or not, they have a consciousness of what it is that we are fighting 
for. We said that this was a people's war — I have explained to you 
that it was, though you did not need the explanation — and we said 
that it must be a people's peace. It is a people's peace. I challenge 
any man to find a contradiction to that statement in the terms of 
the great document with which I returned from Paris. It is so much 
of a people's peace that in every portion of its settlement every 
thought of aggrandizement, of territorial or political "aggrandize- 
ment, on the part of the great powers was brushed aside, brushed 
aside by their own representatives. They declined to take the 
colonies of Germany in sovereignty, and said they would consent 
and demand that they be administered in trust by a concert of the 
nations through the instrumentality of a league of nations. The}^ 
did not claim a single piece of territory. On the contrary, every 
territory that had been under the dominion of the Central Powers, 
unjustly and against its own consent, is by that treaty and the 
treaties which accompany it absolutely turned over in fee simple to 
the people who live in it. The principle is adopted without qualifi- 
cation upon which America was founded, that all just government 
proceeds from the consent of the governed. No nation that could 
141677— S. Doc. 120, 66-1 22 



338 ADDRESSES OE PRESIDENT WILSON". 

be reached by the conclusions of this conference was obliged to ac- 
cept the authority of a government by which it did not wish to be 
controlled. It is a peace of liberation. It is a peace in which the 
rights of peoples are realized, and when objection is made to the 
treaty, is any objection made to the substance of the treaty? There 
is only one thing in the substance of the treaty that has been debated 
seriously, and that is the arrangement by which Japan gets the rights 
that Germany had in Shantung Province in China. I wish I had 
time to go through the story of that fully. It was an unavoidable 
settlement, and nothing can be done for China without the league of 
nations. 

Perhaps you will bear with me if I take time to tell you what I am 
talking about. You know that China has been the common prey of 
the great European powers. Perhaps I should apologize to the 
representatives of those powers for using such a word, but I think 
they would admit that the word is justified. Nation after nation has 
demanded rights, semisovereign rights, and concessions with regard 
to mines and railways and every other resource that China could put 
at their disposition, and China has never been able to say " No " — a 
great learned, patient, diligent people, numbering hundreds of mil- 
lions; has had no organized force with which to resist, and has 
yielded again and again and again to unjust demands. One of these 
demands was made upon her in March, 1898, by Germany — unjustly 
made. I will not go into the particulars, but I could justify that 
word " unjustly." A concession was demanded of her of the control 
of the whole district around Kiaochow Bay, one of the open doors to 
the trade and resources of China. She was obliged to yield to Ger- 
many practically sovereign control over that great region by the sea, 
and into the interior of the Province Germany was privileged to ex- 
tend a railway and to exploit all the deposits of ore that might be 
found for 30 miles on either side of the railway which she was to 
build. The Government of the United States at that time, presided 
over by one of the most enlightened and beloved of our Presidents — 
I mean William McKinley — and the Department of State, guided by 
that able and high-minded man, John Hay, did not make the slightest 
protest. Why? Not because they would not if they could have 
aided China, but because under international law as it then stood no 
nation had the right to protest against anything that other nations 
did that did not directly affect its own rights. Mr. McKinley and Mr. 
Hay did insist that if Germany took control of Kiaochow Bay, she 
should not close those approaches to China against the trade of the 
United States. How pitiful, when you go into the court of right, you 
can not protect China, you can only protect your own merchandise ! 
You can not say, " You have done a great wrong to these people." 
You have got to say, " We yield to the wrong, but we insist that you 



ADDKESSES OF PEESIDENT WILSON. 339 

should admit our goods to be sold in those markets!" Pitiful, but 
nevertheless it was international law. All nations acted in that way 
at that time. Immediately following these concessions to Germany, 
Russia insisted upon concessions and got Port Arthur and other ter- 
ritories. England insisted, though she had had similar concessions 
in the past, upon an additional concession and got Weihaiwai. 
France came into the game and got a port and its territory lying be- 
hind it for the same period of time that Germany had got her con- 
cession, namely, 99 years. 

Then came the war between Russia and Japan, and what hap- 
pened? In a treaty signed on our own sacred territory, at Ports- 
mouth in New Hampshire, Japan was allowed to take from Russia 
what had belonged to China, the concession of Port Arthur and of 
Talienwan, the territory in that neighborhood. The treaty was 
written here ; it was written under the auspices, so to say, of our own 
public opinion, but the Government of the United States was not at 
liberty to protest and did not protest; it acquisced in the very thing 
which is being done in this treaty. What is being done in this treaty 
is not that Shantung is being taken from China. China did not have 
it. It is being taken from Germany, just as Port Arthur was not 
taken from China but taken from Russia and transferred to Japan. 
Before we got into the war, Great Britain and France had entered 
into solemn covenant by treaty with Japan that if she would take 
what Germany had in Shantung by force of arms, and also the 
islands lying north of the Equator which had been under German 
dominion in the Pacific, she could keep them when the peace came 
and its settlements were made. They were bound by a treaty of 
which we knew nothing, but which, notwithstanding our ignorance 
of it, bound them as much as any treaty binds. This war was fought 
to maintain the sacredness of treaties. Great Britain and France, 
therefore, can not consent to a change of the treaty in respect of the 
cession of Shantung, and we have no precedent in our history which 
permits us even to protest against it until we become members of the 
league of nations. 

1 want this point to sink in, my fellow countrymen: The league 
of nations changes the international law of the world with regard 
to matters of this sort. You have heard a great deal about article 10 
of the covenant of the league, and I will speak of it presently, but 
read article 11 in conjunction with article 10. Every member of the 
league, in article 10, agrees never to impair the territorial integrity 
of any other member of the league or to interfere with its existing 
political independence. Both of those things were done in all these 
concessions. There was a very serious impairment of the territorial 
integrity of China in every one of them, and a very serious interfer- 
ence with the political independence of that great but helpless King- 



340 " ADDKESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

dom. Article 10 stops that for good and all. Then, in article 11, 
it is provided that it shall be the friendly right of any member of 
the league at any time to call attention to anything anywhere that 
is likely to disturb the peace of the world or the good understanding 
between nations upon which the peace of the world depends, so that 
the ban would have been lifted from Mr. McKinley and Mr. Roose- 
velt in the matter of these things if we had the covenant of the 
league; they could have gone in and said, u Here is your promise to 
preserve the territorial integrity and political independence of this 
great people. We have the friendly right to protest. We have the 
right to call your attention to the fact that this will breed wars and 
not peace, and that you have not the right to do this thing." Hence- 
forth, for the first time, we shall have the opportunity to play effec- 
tive friends to the great people of China, and I for one feel my pulses 
quicken and my heart rejoice at such a prospect. We, a free people, 
have hitherto been dumb in the presence of the invasion of the free- 
dom of other free peoples, and now restraint is taken away. I say 
it is taken away, for we will be members of the covenant. Restraint is 
taken away, and, like the men that Ave profess to be, we can speak out 
in the interest of free people everywhere. 

But that is not all. America, as I have said, was not bound by the 
agreements of Great Britain and France, on the one hand, and Japan 
on the other. We were free to insist upon a prospect of a different 
settlement, and at the instance of the United States Japan has 
already promised that she will relinquish to Chiria immediately after 
the ratification of this treaty all the sovereign rights that Germany 
had in Shantung Province — the only promise of that kind ever made, 
the only relinquishment of that sort ever achieved — and that she will 
retain only what foreign corporations have all over China — unfor- 
tunately but as a matter of fact — the right to run the railroad and 
the right to work the mines under the usual conditions of Chinese 
sovereignty and as economic concessionaires, with no political rights 
or military power of any kind. It is really an emancipation of China, 
so far as that Province is concerned, from what is imposed upon her 
by other nations in other Provinces equally rich and equally impor- 
tant to the independence of China herself. So that inside the league 
of nations we now have a foothold by which we can play the friend 
to China. 

And the alternative ? If you insist upon cutting out the Shantung 
arrangement, that merely severs us from the treaty. It does not give 
Shantung back to China. The only way you can give Shantung back 
to China is by arms in your hands, armed ships and armed men, sent 
against Japan and Fiance and Great Britain. A fratricidal strife, 
in view of what we have gone through! We have just redeemed 
France. We can not with arms in our hands insist that France 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 341 

break a covenant, however ill judged, however unjust; we can not 
as her brothers in arms commit any such atrocious act against the 
fraternity of free people. So much for Shantung. Nobody can get 
that provision out of that treaty and do China any service whatever, 
and all such professions of friendship for China are empty noise, 
for the gentlemen who make those professions must know that what 
they propose will be not of the slightest service to her. 

That is the only point of serious criticism with regard to the sub- 
stance of the treaty. All the rest refers to the covenant of the 
league of nations. /With regard to that, my fellow citizens, I have 
this to say : Without the covenant of the league of nations that 
1 treaty can not be executed. Without the adherence of the United 
States to that covenant, the covenant can not be made effective. To 
state it another way, the maintenance of the peace of the world and 
the execution of the treaty depend upon the whole-hearted partici- 
pation of the people of the United States. I am not stating it as a 
matter of power. I am not stating it with the thought that the 
United States has greater material wealth and greater physical 
power than any other nation. The point that I want you to get is 
a very profound point; the point is that the United States is the 
only nation of the world that has sufficient moral force with the 
rest of the world. It is the only nation which has proved its dis- 
interestedness. It is the only nation which is not suspected by the 
other nations of the world of ulterior purposes. There is not a Prov- 
ince in Europe in which American troops would not at this moment 
be welcomed with open arms, because the population would know that 
they had come as friends and would go so soon as their errand was 
fulfilled. 1 have had delegations come to me, delegations from coun- 
tries where disorder made the presence of troops necessary, and 
beg me to order American troops there. They said, "We trust them; 
we want them. They are our friends." And all the world, provided 
Ave do not betray them by rejecting this treaty, will continue to re- 
gard us as their friends and follow us as their friends and serve us 
as their friends. It is the noblest opportunity ever offered to a 
great people, and we will not turn away from it. 

We are coming uoav to the grapple, because one question at a time 
is being cleared away. We are presently going to have a show-down, 
a show-down on a very definite issue, and I want to bring your minds 
to that definite issue. A number of objections have been made to the 
covenant of the league of nations, but they have been disposed of in 
candid minds. The first was the question whether we could withdraw 
when we pleased. That is no longer a question in the mind of anybody 
who has studied the language and real meaning of the covenant. We 
can withdraw, upon two years' notice, when we please. I state that 
Avith absolutely no qualification. Then there was the Question as to 



342 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

whether it interfered with self-determination; that is to say, whether 
there was anything in the guarantee of article 10 about terri- 
torial integrity and political independence which would interfere 
with the assertion of the right of great populations anywhere to 
change their governments, to throw off the yoke of sovereignties 
which they did not desire to live under. There is absolutely no such 
restraint. I was present and can testify that Avhen article 10 was de- 
bated the most significant words in it were the words "against external 
aggression." We do not guarantee any government against anything 
that may happen within its own borders or within its own sovereignty. 
We merely say that we will not impair its territorial integrity or 
interfere with its political independence, and we will not countenance 
other nations outside of it making prey of it in the one way or the 
other. Every man who sat around that table, and at the table where 
the conference on the league of nations sat there were 14 free peoples 
represented, believed in the sacred right of self-determination, would 
not have dared to go back and face his own people if he had done or 
said anything that stood in the way of it. That is out of the way. 
There was some doubt as to whether the Monroe doctrine was properly 
recognized, though I do not see how anybody who could read the 
English language could have raised the doubt. The covenant says 
that nothing contained in it shall be construed as affecting the validity 
of the Monroe doctrine, so that by a sudden turn in the whole judg- 
ment of the world the Monroe doctrine was accepted by all the great 
powers of the world. I know what their first impressions were about 
it. I know the history of their change of mind, and I know the hearti- 
ness and unanimity of the conclusion. Nothing can henceforth em- 
barrass the policy of the United States in applying the Monroe doc- 
trine according to her own judgment. But there was apprehension 
that some kind of a supergovernment had been set up which could 
some day interfere in our domestic affairs, say that our immigration 
laws were too rigorous and wrong; that our laws of naturalization 
were too strict and severe ; that our tariff policy did not suit the rest 
of the world. The covenant expressly excludes interference with 
domestic questions, expressly states that it shall not be the right of any 
authority of the league to interfere in matters of that sort. That 
matter is cleared away by everybody who can understand the clauses 
in question. 

There is another matter in that connection I want to speak of. 
The constitution of the league of nations is not often enough ex- 
plained. It is made up of two bodies. One body, which is a com- 
paratively large body, is called the assembly. The assembly is not 
an originative body. The assembly is, so to say, the court of the 
public opinion of the world. It is where you can broach questions, 
but not decide them. It is where you can debate anything that 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 343 

affects the peace of the world, but not determine upon a course of 
action upon anything that affects the peace of the world. The whole 
direction of the action of the league is vested in another body known 
as the council, and nothing in the form of an active measure, no policy, 
110 recommendation with regard to the action of the governments 
composing the league can proceed except upon a unanimous vote of 
the council. Mark you, a unanimous vote of the council. In brief, 
inasmuch as the United States of America is to be a permanent mem- 
ber of the council of the league, the league can take no step what- 
ever without the consent of the United States of America. My 
fellow citizens, think of the significance of that in view of the de- 
bates you have been listening to. There is not a single active step 
that the league can take unless we vote aye. The whole matter is r in 
that negative sense, in the ability to stop any action, in our hands. 
I am sometimes inclined to think that that weakens the league, that 
it has not freedom of action enough, notwithstanding that I share 
with all of my fellow countrymen a very great jealousy with regard 
to setting up any power that could tell us to do anything, but no 
such power is set up. Whenever a question of any kind with regard 
to active policy — and there are only three or four of them — is re- 
ferred to the assembly for its vote, its vote in the affirmative must 
include the representatives of all the nations which are represented 
on the council. In the assembly, as in the council, any single nation 
that is a member of the council has a veto upon active conclusions. 
That is my comment upon what you have been told about Great 
Britain having six votes and our having one. I am perfectly content 
with the arrangement, since our one offsets the British six. I do 
not want to be a repeater ; if my one vote goes, I do not want to re- 
peat it five times. 

And is it not just that in this debating body, from which without the 
unanimous concurrence of the council no active proceeding can origi- 
nate, that these votes should have been given to the self-governing 
powers of the British Empire? I am ready to maintain that posi- 
tion. Is it not just that those stout little Republics out in the Pacific, of 
New Zealand and Australia, should be able to stand up in the councils 
of the world and say something? Do you not know how Australia 
has led the free peoples of the world in many matters that have led to 
social and industrial reform? It is one of the most enlightened com- 
munities in the world and absolutely free to choose its own way of 
life independent of the British authority, except in matters of foreign 
relationship. Do you not think that it is natural that that stout 
little body of men whom we so long watched with admiration in their 
contest with the British Crown in South Africa should have the right 
to stand up and talk before the world ? They talked once with their 
arms, and, if I may judge by my contact with them, the}' can talk 



344 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

with their minds. They know what the interests of South Africa are, 
and they are independent in their control of the interests of South 
Africa. Two of the most impressive and influential men I met in 
Paris were representatives of South Africa, both of them members 
of the British peace delegation in Paris, and yet both of them generals 
who had made British generals take notice through many months of 
their poAver to fight — the men whom Great Britain had fought and 
beaten and felt obliged to hand over their own government to, and 
say, " It is yours and not ours." They were men who spoke counsel, 
who spoke frank counsel. And take our neighbor on the north — do 
you not think Canada is entitled to a speaking part ? I have pointed 
*>ut to you that her voting part is offset, but do you not think she is 
entitled to a speaking part ? Do you not think that that fine dominion 
has been a very good neighbor ? Do you not think she is a good deal 
more like the United States than she is like Great Britain? Do you 
not feel that probably you think alike? The only other vote given 
to the British Empire is given to that hitherto voiceless mass of hu- 
manity that lives in that region of romance and pity that we know as 
India. I am willing that India should stand up in the councils of the 
world and say something. I am willing that speaking parts should be 
assigned to these self-governing, self-respecting, energetic portions of 
the great body of humanity. 

I take leave to say that the deck is cleared of these bugaboos. We 
can get out if we want to. I am not interested in getting out. I am 
interested in getting on. But we can get out. The door is not locked. 
You can sit on the edge of your chair and scuttle any time you want 
to. There are so many who are interested first of all in knowing 
that they are not in for anything that can possibly impose anything 
on them. Well, we are not in for anything that we do not want to 
continue to carry. We can help in the matters of self-determination, 
as we never helped before. The six votes of the British Empire are 
offset by our own, if we choose to offset them. I dare say we shall 
often agree with them; but if Ave do not, they can not do anything 
that we do not consent to. The Monroe doctrine is taken care of. 
There is no danger of interference with domestic questions. 

Well, what remains? Nothing except article 10, and that is the 
heart of the whole covenant. Anybody who proposes to cut out 
article 10 proposes to cut all the supports from under the peace and 
security of the world, and Ave must face the question in that light; 
Ave must draAv the issue as sharply as that ; Ave must see it through as 
distinctly as that. Let me repeat article 10. I do not knoAv that I 
can do it literalty, but I can come very near. Under article 10 eA r ery 
member of the league engages to respect and preserve as against 
external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political 
independence of the other members of the league. That cuts at the 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON". 345 

taproot of war. The wars of the past have been leveled against the 
liberties of peoples and territories of those who could not defend 
them, and if you do not cut at that taproot that upas tree is going to 
grow again; and I tell you my fellow countrymen, that if you do 
not cut it up now it will be harder to cut it up next time. The next 
time will come ; it will come while this generation is living, and the 
children that crowd about our car as we move from station to station 
will be sacrificed upon the altar of that war. It will be the last war. 
Humanity will never suffer another, if humanity survives. My fellow 
countrymen, do you realize that at the end of the war that has just 
closed new instruments of destruction had been invented and were 
about to be used that exceeded in terrible force and destructive 
power any that had been used before in this war ? You have heard 
with wonder of those great cannon from which the Germans sent 
shells 70 miles into Paris. Just before the war closed shells had been 
invented that could be made to steer themselves and cany immense 
bodies of explosives a hundred miles into the interior of countries, 
no matter how great the serried ranks of their soldiers were at the 
border. This war will be child's play as compared with another war. 
You have got to cut the root of that upas tree now or betray all 
future generations. 

And we can not without our vote in the council, even in support 
of article 10, be drawn into Avars that we do not wish to be drawn 
into. The second sentence of article 10 is that the council shall 
advise as to the method of fulfilling this guaranty, that the council 
which must vote by unanimous vote, must advise — can not direct — 
what is to be done for the maintenance of the honor of its members 
and for the maintenance of the peace of the world. Is there any- 
thing that can frighten a man or a woman or a child, with just 
thought or red blood, in those provisions ? And yet listen. I under- 
stand that this reservation is under consideration. I ask your very 
attentive ear. 

The United Slates assumes no obligation under the provisions of article 10 
to preserve the territorial integrity or political independence of any other 
country or to interfere in controversies between other nations, whether mem- 
bers of the league or not, or to employ the military and naval forces of the 
United States under any article of the treaty for any purpose, unless in any 
particular case the Congress, which under the Constitution has the sole power 
to declare war or authorize the employment of the military and naval forces 
of the United States, shall by act or joint resolution so declare. 

In other words, my fellow citizens, what this proposes is this: 
That we should make no general promise, but leave the nations as- 
sociated with us to guess in each instance what we were going to 
consider ourselves bound to do and what we were not going to con- 
sider ourselves bound to do. It is as if you said, " We will not join 



346 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

the league definitely, but we will join it occasionally. We will not 
promise anything, but from time to time we may cooperate. We 
will not assume any obligations." Observe, my fellow citizens, as I 
have repeatedly said to you and can not say too often, the council of 
the league can not oblige us to take military action without the con- 
sent of Congress. There is no possibility of that. But this reserva- 
tion proposes that we should not acknowledge any moral obligation 
in the matter ; that we should stand off and say, " We will see, from 
time to time ; consult us when you get into trouble, and then we will 
have a debate, and after two or three months we will tell you what 
we are going to do." The thing is unworthy and ridiculous, and I 
want to say distinctly that, as I read this, it would change the entire 
meaning of the treaty and exempt the United States from all respon- 
sibility for the preservation of peace. It means the rejection of the 
treaty, my fellow countrymen, nothing less. It means that the 
United States would take from under the structure its very founda- 
tions and support. 

I happen to know that there are some men in favor of that reserva- 
tion who do not in the least degree realize its meaning, men whom I 
greatly respect, men who have just as much ardor to carry out the 
promises of the United States as I have, and I am not indicting their 
purpose, but I am calling their attention to the fact that if any such 
reservation as that should be adopted I would be obliged as the Ex- 
ecutive of the United States to regard it as a rejection of the treaty. 
I ask them, therefore, to consider this matter very carefully, for I 
want you to realize, and I hope they realize, what the rejection of 
the treaty means — two isolated and suspected people, the people of 
Germany and the people of the United States. Germany is not ad- 
mitted to respectable company yet. She is not permitted to enter 
the league until such time as she shall have proved to the satisfaction 
of the world that her change of government and change of heart is 
real and permanent. Then she can be admitted. Now, her dearest 
desire, feeling her isolation, knowing all the consequences that would 
result, economic and social, is to see the United States also cut off 
its association with the gallant peoples with whom side by side we 
fought this war. I am not making this statement by conjecture. 
We get it directly from the mouths of authoritative persons in Ger- 
many that their dearest hope is that America will now accomplish 
b}^ the rejection of the treaty what Germany was not able to ac- 
complish by her arms. She tried to separate us from the rest of the 
world. She tried to antagonize the rest of the world against the 
United States, and she failed so long as American armies were in 
the field. Shall she succeed now, when only American voters are 
in the field? The issue is final. We can not avoid it. We have 
got to make it now, and, once made, there can be no turning back. 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 347 

We either go in with the other free peoples of the world to guaran- 
tee the peace of the world now, or we stay out and on some dark 
and disastrous day we seek admission to the league of nations along 
with Germany. The rejection of this treaty, my fellow citizens, 
means the necessity of negotiating a separate treaty with Germany. 
That separate treaty between Germany and the United States could 
not alter any sentence of this treaty. It could not affect the validity 
of any sentence of this treaty. It would simply be the Government 
of the United States going, hat in hand, to the assembly at Weimar 
and saying, " May it please you, we have dissociated ourselves from 
those who were your enemies; we have come to you asking if you 
will consent to terms of amity and peace which will dissociate us, 
both of us, from the comradeship of arms and liberty." There is 
no other interpretation. There is no other issue. That is the issue, 
and every American must face it. 

But I talk, my fellow citizens, as if I doubted what the decision 
would be. I happen to have been born and bred in America. There 
is not anything in me that is not American. I dare say that I inherit 
a certain stubbornness from an ancient stock from which I am re- 
motely derived; but, then, all of you are derived, more or less re- 
motely, from other stocks. You remember the exclamation of the 
Irishman who said, when he was called a foreigner, " You say we are 
f urriners ; I'd like to know who sittled this kintry but f urriners ! " 
We were all foreigners once, but we have undergone a climatic change, 
and the marvel of America is its solidarity, is its homogeneity, in the 
midst of its variety. The marvel about America is that, no matter 
what a man's stock and origin, you can always tell that he is an Ameri- 
can the minute he begins to express an opinion. He may look some- 
times like a foreigner, but tap him and a/ou will find that the contents 
is American. Having been bred in that way myself, I do not have to 
conjecture what the judgments of America are going to be about a 
great question like this. I know beforehand, and I am only sorry for 
the men who do not know. If I did not know the law of custom and 
of honor against betting on a certainty, I would like to bet with them. 
But it would not be fair ; I would be taking advantage of them. 

If I may close with a word, not of jest, but of solemnity, I want to 
say, my fellow citizens, that there can be no exaggerating the impor- 
tance of this peace and the importance of its immediate ratification, 
because the world will not and can not settle down to normal condi- 
tions, either in America or anywhere else, until it knoAvs what the 
future is going to be. If it must know that the future is going to be 
one of disorder and of rivalry and of the old contests of power, let it 
know it at once, so it can make its arrangements and its calculations 
and lay its taxes and recruit its armies and build its ships for the next 



348 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

great fight ; but if, on the other hand, it can be told that it will have 
an insurance against war, that a great body of powerful nations has 
entered into a solemn covenant to substitute arbitration and discussion 
for war, for that is the heart of the covenant, that all the great fighting 
peoples of the world have engaged to forego war and substitute arbi- 
tration and discussion — if it can know that the minds will be quieted, 
the disorders will presently cease ; then men will know that we have 
the opportunity to do that great, that transcendent duty that lies 
ahead of us, sit quietly down in council chambers and work out the 
proper reforms of our own industrial and economic life. They 
have got to be worked out. If this treaty is not ratified, they will be 
worked out in disorder throughout the world. I am not now inti- 
mating, for I do not think, that disorder will shake the foundations 
of our own affairs, but it will shake the foundations of the world, and 
these inevitable, indispensable reforms will be worked out amongst 
disorder and suspicion and hatred and violence, whereas if Ave can 
have the healing influences of assured peace they will be worked out 
in amity and quiet and by the judgment of men rather than by the 
passions of men. God send that day may come, and come soon ! 
Above all, ma}^ God grant that it may come under the leadership of 
America ! 



ADDRESS AT AUDITORIUM, DENVER, COLO. 

SEPTEMBER 25, 1919. 



Mr. Chairman, my fellow countrymen, I always feel a thrill of 
pride in standing before a great company of my fellow citizens to 
speak for this great document which we shall always know as the 
treaty of Versailles. I am proud to speak for it, because for the 
first time in the history of international consultation men have 
turned away from the ambitions of governments and have sought to 
advance the fortunes of peoples. They have turned away from all 
those older plans of domination and sought to lay anew the founda- 
tions for the liberty of mankind. I say without hesitation that this 
is a great document of liberation. It is a new charter for the liberty 
of men. 

As we have advanced from week to week and from month to 
month in the debate of this great document, I think a great many 
things that we talked about at first have cleared away. A great 
many difficulties which were at first discovered, or which some fan- 
cied that they had discovered, have been removed. The center and 
heart of this document is that great instrument which is placed at the 
beginning of it, the covenant of the league of nations. I think every- 
body now understands that you can not work this treaty without that 
covenant. Everybody certainly understands that you have no in- 
surance for the continuance of this settlement without the covenant 
of the league of nations, and you will notice that, with the single 
exception of the provision with regard to the transfer of the German 
rights in Shantung in China to Japan, practically nothing in the 
body of the treaty has seemed to constitute any great obstacle to its 
adoption. All the controversy, all the talk, has centered on the 
league of nations, and I am glad to see the issue center ; I am glad to 
see the issue clearly drawn, for now we have to decide, Shall we 
stand by the settlements of liberty, or shall we not? 

I want, just by way of introduction and clarification, to point out 
what is not often enough explained to audiences in this country, the 
actual constitution of the league of nations. It is very simply con- 
stituted. It consists of two bodies, a council and an assembly. The 
assembly is the numerous body. In it every self-governing State 

that is a member of the league is represented, and not only the self- 

349 



350 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

governing independent States, but the self-governing colonies and 
dominions, such as Canada, New Zealand, Australia, India, and 
South Africa, are all represented in the assembly. It is in the 
assembly that the combined representation of the several parts of the 
British Empire are assigned six votes, and you are constantly being 
told that Great Britain has six votes and we have one. I want you 
to appreciate the full significance of that. They have six votes in 
the assembly, and the assembly does not vote. That bubble is ex- 
ploded. There are several matters in which the vote of the assembly 
must cooperate with the vote of the council, but in every such case 
an unanimous vote of the council is necessary, and, inasmuch as the 
United States is a permanent member of the council, her vote is 
necessary to every active policy of the league. Therefore the single 
vote of the United States always counts six, so far as the votes of 
the British Empire are concerned, and if it is a mere question of 
pride, I would rather be one and count six than six and count six. 

That affords emphasis to the point I wish you to keep distinctly 
in mind with regard to reservations and all the qualifications of rati- 
fication which are being discussed. No active policy can be under- 
taken by the league without the assenting vote of the United States. 
I can not understand the anxiety of some gentlemen for fear some- 
thing is going to be put over on them. I can not understand why, 
having read the covenant of the league and examined its constitution, 
they are not satisfied with the fact that every active policy of the 
league must be concurred in by a unanimous vote of the council, 
which means that the affirmative vote of the United States is in every 
instance necessary. That being the case, it becomes sheer nonsense, 
my fellow citizens, to talk about a supergovernment being set up over 
the United States ; it becomes sheer nonsense to say that any author- 
ity is constituted which can order our armies to other parts of the 
world, which can interfere with our domestic questions, which can 
direct our international policy even in any matter in which we do 
not consent to be directed. We would be under our own direction 
just as much under the covenant of the league of nations as we are 
now. Of course, I do not mean to say that we do not, so to say, 
pool our moral issues. We do that. In acquiescing in the covenant 
of the league we do adopt, and we should adopt, certain fundamental 
moral principles of right and justice, which, I dare say, we do not 
need to promise to live up to, but which we are certainly proud to 
promise to live up to. We are not turning any corner. We always 
have lived up to them, and we do not intend to change our course 
of action or our standards of action. And it is American standards 
of action that are set up in the covenant of the league of nations. 

What is the covenant for? To hear most of the debate, you would 
think that it was an ingenious contrivance for a subtle interference 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 351 

with the affairs of the United States. On the contrary, it is one of 
the most solemn covenants ever entered into by all the great lighting 
powers of the world that they never will resort to war again with- 
out first having either submitted the question at issue to arbitra- 
tion and undertaken to abide by the verdict of the arbitrators or 
submitted it to discussion by the council of the league of nations, lay- 
ing all the documents, all the facts, before that council, consenting 
that that council should lay all those documents and all those facts 
before the world ; they agree to allow six months for that discussion, 
and, even if they are not satisfied with the opinion, for it is only an 
opinion in that case, rendered by the council, they agree not to go 
to war for three months after the opinion has been rendered. There 
you have nine months' submission to the moral judgment of the 
world. In my judgment, that is an almost complete assurance 
against Avar. If any such covenant as that had existed in 1914, Ger- 
many never would have gone to war. The one thing that Germany 
could not afford to do, and knew that she could not afford to do, 
was to submit her case to the public opinion of the world. We have 
now abundant proof of what would have happened, because it was 
the moral judgment of the world that combined the world against 
Germany. We were a long time, my fellow citizens, seeing that we 
belonged in the war, but just so soon as the real issues of it became 
apparent we knew that we belonged here. And we did an unpre- 
cedented thing. We threw the whole power of a great nation into 
a quarrel with the origination of which it had nothing to do. I 
think there is nothing that appeals to the imagination more in the 
history of men than those convoyed fleets crossing the ocean with 
millions of American soldiers aboard — those crusaders, those men 
who loved liberty enough to leave their homes and fight for it upon 
distant fields of battle, those men who swung out into the open as if 
in fulfillment of the long prophecy of American history. There is 
nothing finer in the records of public action than the united spirit 
of the American people behind this great enterprise. 

I ask your close observation to current events, 1113^ fellow country- 
men. Out of doors, that is to say, that out of legislative halls, there is 
no organized opposition to this treaty except among the people who 
tried to defeat the purpose of this Government in the war. Hyphens 
are the knives that are being stuck into this document. The issue 
is clearly drawn. Inasmuch as we are masters of our own partici- 
pation in the action of the league of nations, why do we need reser- 
vations? If we can not be obliged to do anything that we do not 
ourselves vote to do, why qualify our acceptance of a perfectly safe 
agreement? There can be only one object, my fellow citizens, and 
that is to give the United States a standing of exceptional advan- 



352 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

tage in the league, to exempt it from obligations which the other 
members assume, or to put a special interpretation upon the duties 
of the United States under the covenant which interpretation is not 
applied to the duties of other members of the league under the 
covenant. I, for my part, say that it is unworthy of the United 
States to ask any special privilege of that kind. I am for going into 
a body of equals or staying out. That is the very principle we have 
been fighting for and have been proud to fight for, that the rights 
of a weak nation were just as sacred as the rights of a great nation. 
That is what this treaty was drawn to establish. You must not think 
of this treat};' alone. The lines of it are being run out into the Aus- 
trian treaty and the Hungarian treaty and the Bulgarian treaty and 
the Turkish treaty, and in every one of them the principle is this, 
to deliver peoples who have been living under sovereignties that 
were alien and unwelcome from the bondage under which they have 
lived, to turn over to them their own territory, to adopt the Ameri- 
can principle that all just government is derived from the consent 
of the governed. All down through the center of Europe and into 
the heart of Asia has gone this process of liberation, taking alien 
yokes off the necks of such peoples and vindicating the American 
principle that you can not impose upon anybody a sovereignty that 
is not of its own choice. And if the results of this great liberation 
are not guaranteed, then they will fall down like a house of cards. 
What was the program of Pan Germanism? You know the for- 
mula — from Bremen to Bagdad. Very well ; that is the very stretch 
of country over which these people have been liberated. New States, 
one after another, have been set up by the action of the conference 
at Paris all along the route that was intended to be the route of Ger- 
man dominion, and if we now merely set them up and leave them 
in their weakness to take care of themselves, then Germans can at 
their leisure, by intriguing, by every subtle process of which they 
are master, accomplish what they could not accomplish by arms, 
and we will have abandoned the people whom we redeemed. The 
tiling is inconceivable. The thing is impossible. 

We therefore have come to the straight-cut line — adoption or re- 
jection. Qualified adoption is not adoption. It is perfectly legiti- 
mate, I admit, to say in what sense we understand certain articles. 
They are all perfectly obvious in meaning, so far as I can see, but if 
you Avant to make the obvious more obvious I do not see airy objec- 
tion to that; if by the multiplication of words you can make simple 
words speak their meaning more distinctly, I think that that is an 
interesting rhetorical exercise, but nothing more. Qualification 
means asking special exemptions and privileges for the United States. 
We can not ask that. We must either go in or stay out. Now, if 
we go in what do we get? I am not now confining my view to our- 



ADDRESSES OE PRESIDENT WILSON. 353 

selves. • America has shown the world that she does not stop to cal- 
culate the lower sort of advantage and disadvantage ; that she goes in 
upon a high plane of principle, and is willing to serve mankind while 
she is serving herself. What we gain in this treaty is, first of all, 
the vsubstitution of arbitration and discussion for war. If you got 
nothing else, it is worth the whole game to get that. My fellow 
citizens, we fought this war in order that there should not be another 
like it. I am under bonds, I am under bonds to my fellow citizens 
of every sort, and I am particularly under bonds to the mothers of 
this country and to the wives of this country and to the sweethearts 
that I will do everything in my power to see to it that their sons 
and husbands and sweethearts never have to make that supereme sacri- 
fice again. And when I passed your beautiful Capitol Square just 
now and saw thousands of children there to greet me, I felt a lump 
in my throat. These are the little people that I am arguing for. 
These are my clients, these lads coming on and' these girls that, 
staying at home, would suffer more than the lads who died on the 
battle field, for it is the tears at home that are more bitter than the 
agony upon the field. I dare not turn away from the straight path 
I have set myself to redeem this promise that I have made. 

If you say, " What is there ? An absolute insurance against war ? " 
I say, " Certainly not." Nobody can give you an insurance against 
human passion, but if you can get a little insurance against an infinite 
catastrophe, is it not better than getting none at all ? Let us assume 
that it is only 25 per cent insurance against war. Can any humane 
man reject that insurance? Let us suppose that it is 50 per cent in- 
surance against war. Why, my friends, my calm judgment is that 
it is 99 per cent insurance against war. That is what I went over to 
Europe to get, and that is what I got, and that is what I have brought 
back. 

Stop for a moment to think about the next war, if there should be 
one. I do not hesitate to say that the war we have just been through, 
though it was shot through with terror of every kind, is not to be 
compared with the war we would have to face next time. There 
were destructive gases, there were methods of explosive destruction 
unheard of even during this war, which were just ready for use when 
the Avar ended — great projectiles that guided themselves and shot into 
the heavens went for a hundred miles and more and then burst tons 
of explosives upon helpless cities, something to which the guns with 
which the Germans bombarded Paris from a distance were not com- 
parable. What the Germans used were toys as compared with what 
would be used in the next war. Ask any soldier if he wants to go 
through a hell like that again. The soldiers know what the next war 
would be. They know what the inventions were that were just about 
141677— S. Doc. 120, 66-1 23 



354 ADDKESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON". 

to be used for the absolute destruction of mankind. I am for any 
kind of insurance against a barbaric reversal of civilization. 

And by consequence, the adoption of the treaty means disarma- 
ment, Think of the economic burden and the restraint of liberty 
in the development of professional and mechanic life that resulted 
from the maintenance of great armies, not only in Germany but in 
France and in Italy and, to some extent, in Great Britain. If the 
United States should stand off from this thing we would have to 
have the biggest army in the world. There would be nobody else 
that cared for our fortunes. We would have to look out for our- 
selves, and when I hear gentlemen say, " Yes ; that is what we want 
to do, we want to be independent and look out for ourselves," I say, 
'Well, then, consult your fellow citizens. There will have to be 
universal conscription. There will have to be taxes such as even 
yet we have not seen. There will have to be a concentration of 
authority in the Government capable of using this terrible instru- 
ment. You can not conduct a war or command an army by a de- 
bating society. You can not determine in community centers what 
the command of the Commander in Chief is going to be; you will 
have to have a staff like the German staff, and you will have to 
center in the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy the right 
to take instant action for the protection of the Nation." America 
will never consent to any such thing. 

Then, if we have this great treaty, we have what the world never 
had before — a court of public opinion of the world. I do not think 
that you can exaggerate the significance of that, my fellow country- 
men. International law up to this time has been the most singular 
code of manners. You could not mention to any other Government 
anything that concerned it unless you could prove that your own 
interests were immediately involved. Unless you could prove that 
it was j T our own material interest that was involved, it was impolite 
to speak of it. There might be something brooding that threatened 
the peace of the world, and you could not speak of it unless the 
interests of the United States were involved. I am going to allude 
for a moment to a matter so interesting that I wish I could develop 
it. This cession in Shantung Province in China, which China gave 
to Germany in 1898, was an iniquitous thing at the outset; but our 
great President, William McKinley, and our great Secretary of 
State, John Hay, did not protest against it. It was an outrageous 
invasion of the rights of China. They not only did not protest, but 
all they asked was that Germany, after she got what did not belong 
to her, would please not close the doors against the trade of the 
United States. I am not saying this by way of criticism. That is 
all that under international manners they had a right to ask. Inter- 
national law has been the principle of minding your own business, 



ADDRESSES OE PRESIDENT WILSON. 355 

particularly when something outrageous was up; and article 11 of 
the league of nations makes matters of that sort everybody's busi- 
ness. Under article 11 any member of the league can at any time 
call attention to anything, anywhere, which is likely to affect the 
peace of the world or the good understanding between nations upon 
which the peace of the world depends. The littlest nation, along 
with the biggest — Panama, to take one of our own near neighbors — 
can stand up and challenge the right of any nation in the world to do 
a thing which threatens the peace of the world. It does not have to 
be a big nation to do it. 

The voice of the world is at last released. The conscience of the 
world is at last given a forum, and the rights of men not liberated 
under this treaty are given a place where they can be heard. If 
there are nations which wish to exercise the power of self-determi- 
nation but are not liberated by this treaty, they can come into that 
great forum, they can point out how their demands affect the peace 
and quiet of the world, they can point out how their demands affect 
the good understanding between nations. There is a forum here for 
the rights of mankind which was never before dreamed of, and in 
that forum any representative has the right to speak his full mind. 
If that is not a wholesome moral clearing house, I wish somebody 
would suggest a better. It is just a moral clearing house that the 
world needs. There have been a great many things unspoken that 
ought to have been spoken. There have been voiceless multitudes 
all over the world who had nobody to speak for them in any court of 
conscience anywhere, and now they are given spokesmen. All for- 
ward-looking men may now see their way to the method in which 
they may help forward the real processes of civilization. 

There is another matter which I am sure will interest a great many 
in sound of my voice. If we do not have this treaty of peace, labor 
will continue to be regarded, not as it ought to be regarded, a human 
function, but as a purchasable commodity throughout the world. 
There is inserted in this great treaty a Magna Charta of labor. 
There is set up here a means of periodic examination of the condi- 
tions of labor all over the world, particularly the labor of women 
and children and those who have not the physical force to handle 
some of the burdens that are put upon them, and it is made the duty 
of the nations of the world constantly to study the methods of rais- 
ing the levels of human labor. You know what that means. We 
have not done our full duty with regard to the amelioration and 
betterment of the conditions of labor in America, but the conditions 
here are better than they are anywhere else. We now have an op- 
portunity to exercise our full influence to raise the levels everywhere 
to the levels which we have tried to maintain in this country, aiH 
then to take them higher into the fields of that sort of association 



356 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

between those who employ labor and those who execute it as will 
make it a real human relationship and not a mere commercial rela- 
tionship. The heart of the world has never got into this business 
yet. The conscience of the world has never been released along lines 
of action in regard to the improvement of the conditions of labor.. 
And more than that, until we find such methods as I have been allud- 
ing to, we are never releasing the real energies of this people. Men 
are not going to work and produce what they would produce if they 
feel that they are not justly treated. If you want to realize the real 
wealth of this country, then bring about the human relationship be- 
tween employers and employees which will make them colaborers 
and partners and fellow workers. All of that is open to us through 
the instrumentality of the league of nations under this great treaty^ 
and still we debate whether we should ratify it or not. 

There is a great deal of pleasure in talking, I admit ; and some men, 
even some men I do not agree with, I admit, talk very well, indeed. 
It is a pleasure to hear them when they are honest; it is a pleasure 
to be instructed by them when they know what they are talking about. 
But we have reached the stage now when all the things that needed 
to be debated have been debated and all «the doubts are cleared up. 
They are cleared up just as thoroughly as the English language can 
clear them. The people of the United States are no longer susceptible 
to being misled as to what is in this covenant, and they now have an 
exceedingly interesting choice to make. I have said it a great many 
times, my fellow countrymen, but I must say it again, because it is 
a pleasant thing to testify about, the fundamental thing that I dis- 
covered on the other side of the water was that all the great peoples 
of the world are looking to America for leadership. There can be 
no mistaking that. The evidences were too overwhelming, the evi- 
dences were too profoundly significant, because what underlay them 
was this : We are the only Nation which so far has not laid itself open 
to suspicion of ulterior motives. We are the only Nation which has 
not made it evident that when we go to anybody's assistance we mean 
to stay there longer than we are welcome. Day after day I received 
delegations in Paris asking — what ? Credits from the United States ? 
No. Merchandise from the United States? Yes, if possible; but 
that was not the chief point. They were asking that I send American 
troops to take the place of other troops, because they said, " Our 
people will welcome them with open arms as friends who have come 
for their sakes and not for anything that America can possibly in the 
future have in mind." What an extraordinary tribute to the prin- 
ciples of the United States ! What an extraordinary tribute to the 
sincerity of the people of the United States ! I never was so proud in 
my life as when these evidences began to accumulate. I had been 
proud always of being an American, but I never before realized fully 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON". 357 

what it meant. It meant to stand at the front of the moral forces 
of the world. 

My fellow citizens, I think we must come to sober and immediate 
conclusions. There is no turning aside from the straight line. We 
must now either accept this arrangement or reject it. If we accept it, 
there is no danger either to our safety or to our honor. If we reject 
it, we will meet with suspicion, with distrust, with dislike, with dis- 
illusionment everywhere in the world. This treaty has to be carried 
out. In order to carry this treaty out, it is necessary to reconstruct 
Europe economically and industrially. If we do not take part in 
that reconstruction, we will be shut out from it, and by consequence 
the markets of Europe will be shut to us. The combinations of 
European Governments can be formed to exclude us wherever it is 
possible to exclude us ; and if you want to come to the hard and ugly 
basis of material interest, the United States will everywhere trade at 
an overwhelming disadvantage just so soon as we have forfeited, and 
deserve to forfeit, the confidence of the world. I ask merchants, 
" Who are good customers, friends or enemies ? Who are good 
customers, those who open their doors to you, or those who have 
made some private arrangement elsewhere which makes it impos- 
sible for them to trade with you? " I have heard Europe spoken of 
as bankrupt. There may be great difficulties in paying the public 
debts, but there are going to be no insuperable difficulties to rebegin- 
ning the economic and industrial life of Europe. The men are there, 
the materials are there, the energy is there, and the hope is there. 
The nations are not crushed. They are ready for the great enter- 
prises of the future, and it is for us to choose whether we will enter 
those great enterprises upon a footing of advantage and of honor 
or upon a footing of disadvantage and distrust. 

Therefore, from every point of view, I challenge the opponents of 
this treaty to show cause why it should not be ratified. I challenge 
them to show cause why there should be any hesitation in ratifying 
it. I do not understand delays. I do not understand covert processes 
of opposition. It is time that we knew where we shall stand, for ob- 
serve, my fellow citizens, the negotiation of treaties rests with the 
Executive of the United States. When the Senate has acted, it will 
be for me to determine whether its action constitutes an adoption or 
a rejection, and I beg the gentlemen who are responsible for the 
action of the United States Senate to make it perfectly clear whether 
it is an adoption or a rejection. I do not wish to draw doubtful con- 
clusions. I do not wish to do injustice to the process of any honest 
mind. But when that treaty is acted upon I must know whether it 
means that we have ratified it or rejected it, and I feel confident that 
I am speaking for the people of the United States. 



358 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

When it is around election time, my fellow citizens, a man ought 
to be doubtful of what the meaning of his intercourse with his fel- 
low citizens is, because it is easy for applause to go to the head ; it is 
easy for applause to seem to men more than it does; it is easy for 
the assurances of individual support to be given a wider implication 
than can properly be given to them. I thank God that on this oc- 
casion the whole issue has nothing to do with me. I did not carry 
any purpose of my own to Paris. I did not carry any purpose that 
I did not know from the action of public opinion in the United 
States was the purpose of the United States. It was not the purpose 
of a party. It was not the purpose of any section of our fellow 
citizens. It was a purpose subscribed to by American public opin- 
ion and formally adopted by the Governments with which we had 
to deal on the other side, and I came back with a document embody- 
ing the principles insisted upon at the outset and carried by the 
American delegation to Paris. Therefore I think that I have the 
right to say that I have the support of the people of the United 
States. The issue is so big that it transcends all party and personal 
things. I was a spokesman ; I was an instrument. I did not speak 
any privately conceived idea of my own. I had merely tried to ab- 
sorb the influences of public opinion in the United States, and that, 
my fellow citizens, is the function of all of us. We ought not in 
a great crisis like this to follow any private opinion; we ought not 
to follow any private purpose ; we ought, above all things, to forget 
that we are ever divided into parties when we vote. We are all 
democrats — I will not insist upon the large "D" — we are all dem- 
ocrats because we believe in a people's government, and what I am 
pleading for is nothing less than a people's peace. 



ADDRESS AT PUEBLO, COLO., 

SEPTEMBER 25, 1919. 



Mr. Chairman and fellow countrymen, it is with a great deal of 
genuine pleasure that I find myself in Pueblo, and I feel it a com- 
pliment that I should be permitted to be the first speaker in this 
beautiful hall. One of the advantages of this hall, as I look about, 
is that you are not too far away from me, because there is nothing 
so reassuring to men who are trying to express the public sentiment 
as getting into real personal contact with their fellow citizens. I 
have gained a renewed impression as I have crossed the continent this 
time of the homogeneity of this great people to whom we belong. 
They come from many stocks, but they are all of one kind. They 
come from many origins, but they are all shot through with the same 
principles and desire the same righteous and honest things. I have 
received a more inspiring impression this time of the public opinion 
of the United States than it was ever my privilege to receive before. 

The chief pleasure of my trip has been that it has nothing to do 
with my personal fortunes, that it has nothing to do with my per- 
sonal reputation, that it has nothing to do with anything except 
great principles uttered by Americans of all sorts and of all parties 
which we are now trying to realize at this crisis of the affairs of the 
world. But there have been unpleasant impressions as well as pleas- 
ant impressions, my fellow citizens, as I have crossed the continent. 
I have perceived more and more that men have been busy creating 
an absolutely false impression of what the treaty of peace and the 
covenant of the league of nations contain and mean. I find, more- 
over, that there is an organized propaganda against the league of 
nations and against the treaty proceeding from exactly the same 
sources that the organized propaganda proceeded from which threat- 
ened this country here and there with disloyalty, and I want to say — 
I can not say too often — any m'an who carries a hyphen about with 
him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this 
Republic whenever he gets ready. If I can catch any man with a 
hyphen in this great contest I will know that I have got an enemy 
of the Republic. My fellow citizens, it is only certain bodies of for- 

359 



360 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

eign sympathies, certain bodies of sympathy with foreign nations 
that are organized against this great document which the American 
representatives have brought back from Paris. Therefore, in order 
to clear away the mists, in order to remove the impressions, in order 
to check the falsehoods that have clustered around this great subject, 
I want to tell you a few very simple things about the treaty and the 
covenant. 

Do not think of this treaty of peace as merely a settlement with 
Germany. It is that. It is a very severe settlement with Germany, 
but there is not anything in it that she did not earn. Indeed, she 
J earned more than she can ever be able to pay for, and the punishment 
exacted of her is not a punishment greater than she can bear, and it 
is absolutely necessary in order that no other nation may ever plot 
such a thing against humanity and civilization. But the treaty is 
so much more than that. It is not merely a settlement with Ger- 
many; it is a readjustment of those great injustices which underlie 
the whole structure of European and Asiatic society. This is only 
the first of several treaties. They are all constructed upon the same 
plan. The Austrian treaty follows the same lines. The treaty with 
Hungary follows the same lines. The treaty with Bulgaria follows 
the same lines. The treaty with Turkey, when it is formulated, will 
follow the same lines. What are those lines? They are based upon 
the purpose to see that every government dealt with in this great set- 
tlement is put in the hands of the people and taken out of the hands 
of coteries and of sovereigns who had no right to rule over the people. 
It is a people's treaty, that accomplishes by a great sweep of practical 
justice the liberation of men who never could have liberated them- 
selves, and the power of the most powerful nations has been devoted 
not to their aggrandizement but to the liberation of people whom 
they could have put under their control if they had chosen to do so. 
Not one foot of territory is demanded by the conquerors, not one 
single item of submission to their authority is demanded by them. 
The men who sat around that table in Paris knew that the time had 
come when the people were no longer going to consent to live under 
masters, but were going to live the lives that they chose themselves, 
to live under such governments as they chose themselves to erect. 
That is the fundamental principle of this great settlement. 

And we did not stop with that. We added a great international 
charter for the rights of labor. Rejeet this treaty, impair it, and this 
is the consequence to the laboring men of the world, that there is no 
international tribunal which can bring the moral judgments of the 
world to bear upon the great labor questions of the day. What we 
need to do with regard to the labor questions of the day, my fellow 
countrymen, is to lift them into the light, is to lift them out of the 
haze and distraction of passion, of hostility, not into the calm spaces 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 361 

where men look at things without passion. The more men you get 
into a great discussion the more you exclude passion. Just so soon as 
the calm judgment of the world is directed upon the question of jus- 
tice to labor, labor is going to have a forum such as it never was sup- 
plied with before, and men everywhere are going to see that the 
problem of labor is nothing more nor less than the problem of the ele- 
vation of humanity. We must see that all the questions which have 
disturbed the world, all the questions which have eaten into the con- 
fidence of men toward their governments, all the questions which 
have disturbed the processes of industry, shall be brought out where 
men of all points of view, men of all attitudes of mind, men of all 
kinds of experience, may contribute their part to the settlement of the 
great questions which we must settle and can not ignore. 

At the front of this great treaty is put the covenant of the league 
of nations. It will also be at the front of the Austrian treaty and 
the Hungarian treaty and the Bulgarian treaty and the treaty with 
Turkey. Every one of them will contain the covenant of the league 
of nations, because you can not work any of them without the cove- 
nant of the league of nations. Unless you get the united, concerted 
purpose and power of the great Governments of the world behind 
this settlement, it will fall down like a house of cards. There is only 
one power to put behind the liberation of mankind, and that is the 
power of mankind. It is the power of the united moral forces of 
the world, and in the covenant of the league of nations the moral 
forces of the world are mobilized. For what purpose? Reflect, 
my fellow citizens, that the membership of this great league is going 
to include all the great fighting nations of the world, as well as the 
weak ones. It is not for the present going to include Germany, but 
for the time being Germany is not a great fighting country. All 
the nations that have power that can be mobilized are going to be 
members of this league, including the United States. And what do 
they unite for ? They enter into a solemn promise to one another that 
they will never use their power against one another for aggression ; 
that they never will impair the territorial integrity of a neighbor; 
that they never will interfere with the political independence of a 
neighbor ; that they will abide by the principle that great populations 
are entitled to determine their own destiny and that they will not 
interfere with that destiny ; and that no matter what differences arise 
amongst them they will never resort to war without first having done 
one or other of two things — either submitted the matter of con- 
troversy to arbitration, in which case they agree to abide by the 
result without question, or submitted it to the consideration of the 
council of the league of nations, laying before that council all the 
documents, all the facts, agreeing that the council can publish the 
documents and the facts to the whole world, agreeing that there shall 



362 ADDKESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

be six months allowed for the mature consideration of those facts 
by the council, and agreeing that at the expiration of the six months, 
even if they are not then ready to accept the advice of the council 
with regard to the settlement of the dispute, they will still not go 
to war for another three months. In other words, they consent, no 
matter what happens, to submit every matter of difference between 
them to the judgment of mankind, and just so certainly as they do 
that, my fellow citizens, war will be in the far background, war 
will be pushed out of that foreground of terror in which it has 
kept the world for generation after generation, and men will know 
that there will be a calm time of deliberate counsel. The most 
dangerous thing for a bad cause is to expose it to the opinion of the 
world. The most certain way that you can prove that a man is 
mistaken is by letting all his neighbors know what he thinks, by let- 
ting all his neighbors discuss what he thinks, and if he is in the 
wrong you will notice that he will stay at home, he will not walk 
on the street. He will be afraid of the eyes of his neighbors. He 
will be afraid of their judgment of his character. He will know 
that his cause is lost unless he can sustain it by the arguments of 
right and of justice. The same law that applies to individuals ap- 
plies to nations. 

But, you say, " We have heard that we might be at a disadvantage 
in the league of nations." Well, whoever told you that either was 
deliberately falsifying or he had not read the covenant of the league 
of nations. I leave him the choice. I want to give you a very simple 
account of the organization of the league of nations and let you 
judge for yourselves. It is a very simple organization. The power 
of the league, or rather the activities of the league,, lie in two bodies. 
There is the council, which consists of one representative from each 
of the principal allied and associated powers — that is to say, the 
United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan, along with 
four other representatives of smaller powers chosen out of the gen- 
eral body of the membership of the league. The council is the source 
of every active policy of the league, and no active policy of the 
league can be adopted without a unanimous vote of the council. 
That is explicitly stated in the covenant itself. Does it not evidently 
follow that the league of nations can adopt no policy whatever with- 
out the consent of the United States? The affirmative vote of the 
representative of the United States is necessary in every case. Now, 
you have heard of six votes belonging to the British Empire. Those 
six votes are not in the council. They are in the assembly, and the 
interesting thing is that the assembly does not vote. I must qualify 
that statement a little, but essentially it is absolutely true. In every 
matter in which the assembly is given a voice, and there are only 
four or five, its vote does not count unless concurred in by the repre- 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 363 

sentatives of all the nations represented on the council, so that there 
is no validity to any vote of the assembly unless in that vote also the 
representative of the United States concurs. That one vote of the 
United States is as big as the six votes of the British Empire. I am 
not jealous for advantage, my fellow citizens, but I think that is a 
perfectly safe situation. There is no validity in a vote, either by the 
council or the assembly, in which we do not concur. So much for the 
statements about the six votes of the British Empire. 

Look at it in another aspect. The assembly is the talking body. 
The assembly was created in order that anybody that purposed any- 
thing wrong should be subjected to the awkward circumstance that 
everybody could talk about it. This is the great assembly in which 
all the things that are likely to disturb the peace of the world or the 
good understanding between nations are to be exposed to the general 
view, and I want to ask you if you think it was unjust, unjust to the 
United States, that speaking parts should be assigned to the several 
portions of the British Empire? Do you think it unjust that there 
should be some spokesman in debate for that fine little stout Eepublic 
down in the Pacific, New Zealand? Do you think it was unjust that 
Australia should be allowed to stand up and take part in the debate — 
Australia, from which we have learned some of the most useful pro- 
gressive policies of modern time, a little nation only five million in 
a great continent, but counting for several times five in its activities 
and in its interest in liberal reform? Do you think it unjust that that 
little Republic down in South Africa, whose gallant resistance to 
being subjected to any outside authority at all we admired for so 
many months and whose fortunes we followed with such interest, 
should have a speaking part? Great Britain obliged South Africa 
to submit to her sovereignty, but she immediately after that felt that 
it was convenient and right to hand the whole self-government of 
that colony over to the very men whom she had beaten. The repre- 
sentatives of South Africa in Paris were two of the most distinguished 
generals of the Boer Army, two of the realest men I ever met, two men 
that could talk sober counsel and wise advice, along with the best 
statesmen in Europe. To exclude Gen. Botha and Gen. Smuts from 
the right to stand up in the parliament of the world and say some- 
thing concerning the affairs of mankind would be absurd. And 
what about Canada? Is not Canada a good neighbor? I ask you, 
Is not Canada more likely to agree with the United States than with 
Great Britain ? Canada has a speaking part. And then, for the first 
time in the history of the world, that great voiceless multitude, that 
throng hundreds of millions strong in India, has a voice, and I want 
to testify that some of the wisest and most dignified figures in the 
peace conference at Paris came from India, men who seemed to 



364 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

carry in their minds an older wisdom than the rest of us had, whose 
traditions ran back into so many of the unhappy fortunes of mankind 
that they seemed very useful counselors as to how some ray of hope 
and some prospect of happiness could be opened to its people. I for 
my part have no jealousy whatever of those five speaking parts in the 
assembly. Those speaking parts can not translate themselves into five 
votes that can in any matter override the voice and purpose of the 
United States. 

Let us sweep aside all this language of jealousy. Let us be big 
enough to know the facts and to welcome the facts, because the facts 
are based upon the principle that America has always fought for, 
namely, the equality of self-governing peoples, whether they were 
big or little — not counting men, but counting rights, not counting 
representation, but counting the purpose of that representation. 
When you hear an opinion quoted you do not count the number of 
persons who hold it ; you ask, " Who said that ? " You weigh opin- 
ions, you do not count them, and the beauty of all democracies is 
that every voice can be heard, every voice can have its effect, every 
voice can contribute to the general judgment that is finally arrived 
at. That is the object of democracy. Let us accept what America 
has always fought for,' and accept it with pride that America showed 
the way and made the proposal. I do not mean that America made 
the proposal in this particular instance; I mean that the principle 
was an American principle, proposed by America. 

When you come to the heart of the covenant, my fellow citizens, 
you will find it in article 10, and I am very much interested to know 
that the other things have been blown away like bubbles. There is 
nothing in the other contentions with regard to the league of na- 
tions, but there is something in article 10 that you ought to realize 
and ought to accept or reject. Article 10 is the heart of the whole 
matter. What is article 10? I never am certain that I can from 
memory give a literal repetition of its language, but I am sure that 
I I can give an exact interpretation of its meaning. Article 10 pro- 
vides that every member of the league covenants to respect and 
preserve the territorial integrity and existing political independence 
of every other member of the league as against external aggression. 
Not against internal disturbance. There was not a man at that table 
who did not admit the sacredness of the right of self-determination, 
the sacredness of the right of any body of people to say that they 
tvoulcl not continue to live under the Government they were then 
living under, and under article 11 of the covenant they are given a 
place to say whether they will live under it or not. 'For follow- 
ing article 10 is article 11, which makes it the right of any member 
of the league at any time to call attention to anything, anywhere, 
that is likelv to disturb the peace of the world or the good under- 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 365 

standing between nations upon which the peace of the world de- 
pends. I want to give you an illustration of what that would mean. 
You have heard a great deal— something that was true and a great 
deal that was false — about that provision of the treaty which hands 
over to Japan the rights which Germany enjoyed in the Province 
of Shantung in China. In the first place, Germany did not enjoy 
any rights there that other nations had not already claimed. For 
my part, my judgment, my moral judgment, is against the whole set 
of concessions. They were all of them unjust to China, they ought 
never to have been exacted, they were all exacted by duress from a 
great body of thoughtful and ancient and helpless people. There 
never was any right in any of them. Thank God, America never 
asked for any, never dreamed of asking for any. But when Germany 
got this concession in 1898, the Government of the United States 
made no protest whatever. That was not because the Government 
of the United States was not in the hands of high-minded and con- 
scientious men. It was. William McKinley was President and 
John Hay was Secretary of State — as safe hands to leave the honor 
of the United States in as any that you can cite. They made no 
protest because the state of international law at that time was that 
it was none of their business unless they could snow that the interests 
of the United States were affected, and the only thing that they 
could show with regard to the interests of the United States was 
that Germany might close the doors of Shantung Province against 
the trade of the United States. They, therefore, demanded and ob- 
tained promises that we could continue to sell merchandise in Shan- 
tung. Immediately following that concession to Germany there was 
a concession to Russia of the same sort, of Port Arthur, and Port 
Arthur was handed over subsequently to Japan on the very territory 
of the United States. Don't you remember that when Russia and 
Japan got into war with one another the war was brought to a 
conclusion by a treaty written at Portsmouth, N. H., and in that 
treaty without the slightest intimation from any authoritative 
sources in America that the Government of the United States had 
any objection, Port Arthur, Chinese territory, was turned over to 
Japan? I want you distinctly to understand that there is no 
thought of criticism in my mind. I am expounding to you a state 
of international law. Now, read articles 10 and 11. You will see 
that international law is revolutionized by putting morals into it. is 
Article 10 says that no member of the league, and that includes all 
these nations that have demanded these things unjustly of China, 
shall impair the territorial integrity or the political independence of 
any other member of the league. China is going to be a member of 
the league. Article 11 says that any member of the league can call 
attention to anything that is likely to disturb the peace of the 



366 ADDRESSES OP PRESIDENT WILSON. 

world or the good understanding between nations, and China is foi 
the first time in the history of mankind afforded a standing before 
the jury of the world. I, for my part, have a profound sympathy for 
China, and I am proud to have taken part in an arrangement which 
promises the protection of the world to the rights of China. The 
whole atmosphere of the world is changed by a thing like that, my 
fellow citizens. The whole international practice of the world is 
revolutionized. 

But you will say, " What is the second sentence of article 10 ? 
That is what gives very disturbing thoughts." The second sentence 
is that the council of the league shall advise what steps, if any, are 
necessary to carry out the guaranty of the first sentence, namely, 
that the members will respect and preserve the territorial integrity 
and political independence of the other members. I do not know 
any other meaning for the word " advise " except " advise." The 
council advises, and it can not advise without the vote of the United 
States. Why gentlemen should fear that the Congress of the United 
States would be advised to do something that it did not want to do 
I frankly can not imagine, because they can not even be advised to 
do anything unless their own representative has participated in the 
advice. It may be that that will impair somewhat the vigor of the 
league, but, nevertheless, the fact is so, that we are not obliged to 
take any advice except our own, which to any man who wants to go 
his own course is a very satisfactory state of affairs. Every man 
regards his own advice as best, and I dare say every man mixes his 
own advice with some thought of his own interest. Whether we use 
it wisely or unwisely, we can use the vote of the United States to 
make impossible drawing the United States into any enterprise that 
she does not care to be drawn into. 

Yet article 10 strikes at the taproot of war. Article 10 is a state-' 
ment that the very things that have always been sought in imperial- 
istic wars are henceforth forgone by every ambitious nation in the 
world. I would have felt very lonely, my fellow countrymen, and I 
would have felt very much disturbed if, sitting at the peace table in 
Paris, I had supposed that I was expounding my own ideas. Whether 
you believe it or not, I know the relative size of my own ideas; I 
know how they stand related in bulk and proportion to the moral 
judgments of my fellow countrymen, and I proposed nothing what- 
ever at the peace table at Paris that I had not sufficiently certain 
knowledge embodied the moral judgment of the citizens of the 
United States. I had gone over there with, so to say, explicit instruc- 
tions. Don't you remember that we laid down 14 points which 
should contain the principles of the settlement? They were not 
my points. In every one of them I was conscientiously trying to 
read the thought of the people of the United States, and after I 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 367 

uttered those points I had every assurance given me that could be 
given me that they did speak the moral judgment of the United 
States and not my single judgment. Then when it came to that 
critical period just a little less than a year ago, when it was evident 
that the war was coming to its critical end, all the nations engaged 
in the war accepted those 14 principles explicitly as the basis of the 
armistice and the basis of the peace. In those circumstances I 
crossed the ocean under bond to my own people and to the other 
governments with which I was dealing. The whole specification of 
the method of settlement was written down and accepted beforehand, 
and we were architects building on those specifications. It reassures 
me and fortifies my position to find how before I went over men 
whose judgment the United States has often trusted were of exactly 
the same opinion that I went abroad to express. Here is something 
I want to read from Theodore Roosevelt: 

" The one effective move for obtaining peace is by an agreement 
among all the great powers in which each should pledge itself not 
only to abide by the decisions of a common tribunal but to back 
its decisions by force. The great civilized nations should com- 
bine by solemn agreement in a great world league for the peace 
of righteousness; a court should be established. A changed and 
amplified Hague court would meet the requirements, composed of 
representatives from each nation, whose representatives are sworn 
to act as judges in each case and not in a representative capacity." 
Now there is article 10. He goes on and says this : " The nations 
should agree on certain rights that should not be questioned, such as 
territorial integrity, their right to deal with their domestic affairs, 
and with such matters as whom they should admit to citizenship. 
All such guarantee each of their number in possession of these 
rights." - 

Now, the other specification is in the covenant. The covenant in 
another portion guarantees to the members the independent control 
of their domestic questions. There is not a leg for these gentlemen 
to stand on when they say that the interests of the United States are 
not safeguarded in the very points where we are most sensitive. You 
do not need to be told again that the covenant expressly says that 
nothing in this covenant shall be construed as affecting the validity 
of the Monroe doctrine, for example. You could not be more explicit 
than that. And every point of interest is covered, partly for one 
very interesting reason. This is not the first time that the Foreign 
Relations Committee of the Senate of the United States has read and 
considered this covenant. I brought it to this country in March last 
in a tentative, provisional form, in practically the form that it now 
has, with the exception of certain additions which I shall mention 



368 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

immediately. I asked the Foreign ^Relations Committees of both 
Houses to come to the White House and we spent a long evening in 
the frankest discussion of every portion that they wished to discuss. 
They made certain specific suggestions as to what should be contained 
in this document when it was to be revised. I carried those sugges- 
tions to Paris, and every one of them was adopted. What more could 
I have done? What more could have been obtained? The very 
matters upon which these gentlemen were most concerned were, the 
right of withdrawal, which is now expressly stated ; the safeguarding 
of the Monroe doctrine, which is now accomplished; the exclusion 
from action by the league of domestic questions, which is now accom- 
plished. All along the line, every suggestion of the United States 
was adopted after the covenant had been drawn up in its first form 
and had been published for the criticism of the world. There is a 
very true sense in which I can say this is a tested American document. 
I am dwelling upon these points, my fellow citizens, in spite of 
the fact that I dare say to most of you they are perfectly well known, 
because in order to meet the present situation we have got to know 
what Ave are dealing with. We are not dealing with the kind of 
document which this is represented by some gentlemen to be; and 
inasmuch as we are dealing with a document simon-pure in respect 
of the very principles we have professed and lived up to, we have 
got to do one or other of two things — we have got to adopt it or re- 
ject it. There is no middle course. You can not go in on a special- 
privilege basis of your own. I take it that you are too proud to ask 
to be exempted from responsibilties which the other members of the 
league will carry. We go in upon equal terms or we do not go in at 
all ; and if we do not go in, my fellow citizens, think of the tragedy 
of that result — the only sufficient guaranty to the peace of the world 
withheld ! Ourselves drawn apart with that dangerous pride which 
means that we shall be ready to take care of ourselves, and that 
means that we shall maintain great standing armies and an irre- 
sistible navy; that means we shall have the organization of a mil- 
itary nation ; that means we shall have a general staff, with the kind 
of power that the general staff of Germany had; to mobilize this 
great manhood of the Nation when it pleases, all the energy of our 
young men drawn into the thought and preparation for war. What 
of our pledges to the men that lie dead in France? We said that 
they went over there not to prove the prowess of America or her 
readiness for another Avar but to see to it that there neA^er was such 
a Avar again. It ahva3 7 s seems to make it difficult for me to say airy- 
thing, my fellow citizens, Avhen I think of my clients in this case. 
My clients are the children; my clients are the next generation. 
They do not knoAA 7 what promises and bonds I undertook when T 



ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 369 

ordered the armies of the United States to the soil of France, but I 
know, and I intend to redeem my pledges to the children; they shall 
not be sent upon a similar errand. 

Again and again, my fellow citizens, mothers who lost their sons 
in France have come to me and, taking my hand, have shed tears upon 
it not only, but they have added, " God bless you, Mr. President ! " 
Wiry, my fellow citizens, should they pra}^ God to bless me ? I advised 
the Congress of the United States to create the situation that led to 
the death of their sons. I ordered their sons oversea. I consented 
to their sons being put in the most difficult parts of the battle line, 
where death was certain, as in the impenetrable difficulties of the for- 
est of Argonne. Why should they weep upon my hand and call down 
the blessings of God upon me ? Because they believe that their boys 
died for something that vastly transcends any of the immediate and 
palpable objects of the war. They believe, and they rightly believe, 
that their sons saved the liberty of the world. They believe that 
wrapped up with the liberty of the world is the continuous protection 
of that liberty by the concerted powers of all civilized people. They 
believe that this sacrifice was made in order that other sons should 
not be called upon for a similar gift — the gift of life, the gift of all 
that died — and if we did not see this thing through, if we fulfilled 
the dearest present wish of Germany and now dissociated ourselves 
from those alongside whom we fought in the war, would not some- 
thing of the halo go away from the gun over the mantelpiece, or 
the sword? Would not the old uniform lose something of its sig- 
nificance? These men were crusaders. They were not going forth 
to prove the might of the United States. They were going forth to 
prove the might of justice and right, and all the world accepted them 
as crusaders, and their transcendent achievement has made all the 
world believe in America as it believes in no other nation organized 
in the modern world. There seems to me to stand between us and the 
rejection or qualification of this treaty the serried ranks of those 
boys in khaki, not only these boys who came home, but those dear 
ghosts that still deploy upon the fields of France. 

My friends, on last Decoration Day I went to a beautiful hillside 
near Paris, where was located the cemetery of Suresnes, a cemetery 
given over to the burial of the American dead. Behind me on the 
slopes was rank upon rank of living American soldiers, and lying 
before me upon the levels of the plain was rank upon rank of de- 
parted American soldiers. Right by the side of the stand where 
I spoke there was a little group of French women who had adopted 
those graves, had made themselves mothers of those dear ghosts by 
putting flowers every day upon those graves, taking them as their 
own sons, their own beloved, because they had died in the same 
141677— S. Doc. 120, 66-1 24 



370 ADDRESSES OF PRESIDENT WILSON.. 

cause — France was free and the world was free because America 
had come ! I wish some men in public life who are now opposing 
the settlement for which these men died could visit such a spot as that. 
I wish that the thought that comes out of those graves could pene- 
trate their consciousness. I wish that they could feel the moral ob- 
ligation that rests upon us not to go back on those boys, but to see 
the thing through, to see it through to the end and make good their 
redemption of the world. For nothing less depends upon this de- 
cision, nothing less than the liberation and salvation of the world. 
You will say, " Is the league an absolute guaranty against war ? '" 
No; I do not know any absolute guaranty against the errors of 
human judgment or the violence of human passion, but I tell you 
this : With a cooling space of nine months for human passion, not 
much of it will keep hot. I had a couple of friends who were in the 
habit of losing their tempers, and when they lost their tempers they 
were in the habit of using very unparliamentary language. Some of 
their friends induced them to make a promise that they never would 
swear inside the town limits. When the impulse next came upon 
them, they took a street car to go out of town to swear, and by the time 
they got out of town they did not want to swear. They came back 
convinced that they were just what they were, a couple of unspeak- 
able fools, and the habit of getting angry and of swearing suffered 
great inroads upon it by that experience. Now, illustrating the great 
by the small, that is true of the passions of nations. It is true of the 
passions of men however you combine them. Give them space to 
cool off. I ask you this: If it is not an absolute insurance against 
war, do you want no insurance at all? Do you want nothing? Do 
you want not onty no probability that war will not recur, but the 
probability that it will recur? The arrangements of justice do not 
stand of themselves, my fellow citizens. The arrangements of this 
treaty are just, but they need the support of the combined power of 
the great nations of the world. And they will have that support. 
Now that the mists of this great question have cleared away, I be- 
lieve that men will see the truth, eye to eye and face to face. There 
is one thing that the American people always rise to and extend their 
hand to, and that is the truth of justice and of liberty and of peace. 
We have accepted that truth and we are going to be led by it, and 
it is going to lead us, and through us the world, out into pastures 
of quietness and peace such as the world never dreamed of before. 



o 













^ 



% 4 




^** (///,ni3A\\\\ =r- , At *-v r-o- : ^ -^ 



<\ 



'^0^ 




Cr'. 



^ V 1 



$ 






Q 




^ ■%, 



Or 






,v- 



rt $ 






s 



\\ n N c 



W 



'.. ^ >? 



^ 



.-\ 



^ 



// 




W 

^ •% 






^ y .- k * '\ 

: « oo 

°/- * « ^ * \^ s • o , ^>- 



•* > 




x° o* 



y 







< 



^4 






^o 






o o 



c ' ^^ 



% * 



^ ^. 












A 










o u ♦ 




I 8 










Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proces 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: iim »uu 



xV ^ 






Oxide 

2001 















Treatment Date: iijij nj«« 

Preservationfechnolodj 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATIO 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 1 6066 
(724) 779-2111 












1 




■ V 






o 



x ^, 




^ ^ 






^ ^ 



,0 o 



C< 









V 



%» / 






w 



-« %^ v 






^v aX x " 





** v % 






^ * 




v X , ° N c . ^ 



,** 



^ V 



•JO 



* o. 



* <f J 



,0o 



oq x 






,H 



V*. 






f^P ^ 









jy % v. 

i I a "C v A <3 *v 6 <* \ 






